I’ve been a bit tardy updating BludgerTrack this week, but as you can see below, you haven’t been missing much. The moral of the story is that a single Essential Research result is unlikely to change much under the new set-up, particularly when, as present, it accounts for 16 out of 20 available data points. Things may be different when, presumably, Newspoll comes along either tonight or tomorrow night. No new numbers this week on leadership ratings. Keep reading below the fold for a whole bunch of material on party games, and also note that there’s a separate post below this one for presidential election discussion.
Other news:
• The Victorian branch of the ALP last week signed off on Kimberley Kitching as Stephen Conroy’s Senate replacement, following the Right faction warlord’s surprise retirement announcement in mid-September. Kitching is a lawyer with Cornwall Stodart, and was formerly a Melbourne City councillor and general manager of the troubled Health Services Union. The royal commission into trade union corruption recommended charges be pursued against Kitching relating to allegations she completed tests for workplace entry permits on behalf of union organisers, but none have been forthcoming in the two years since. Kitching was effectively unopposed in the vote by the party’s Public Office Selection Committee, as factional arrangements reserve the seat for the Right. She had won the Right’s backing ahead of Diana Taylor, former Clayton Utz lawyer and a director at the Geelong Football Club, who had support from Richard Marles, federal front-bencher and member for Corio. According to the Herald Sun, other nominees included “Warrnambool city councillor Jacinta Ermacora, former state member for Benalla Denise Allan, Maribyrnong councillor Sarah Carter and 2010 Young Victorian of the Year Wesa Chau”.
Kitching and her husband, Andrew Landeryou – whose VexNews blog trod on many a toe until he retired it in 2013 out of deference to his wife’s political ambitions – are both close to Bill Shorten. Reports have identified widespread criticism of Shorten’s actions within the party from mostly unidentified sources, although Anthony Albanese declined an opportunity to endorse Kitching, saying her preselection was “a matter for the Victorian branch”. Albanese also said there was “a case for ensuring that members have votes in Senate pre-selections” – true of the his own branch in New South Wales, but not in Victoria. Sarah Martin of The Australian reports that a Left-sponsored motion at the Victorian party’s state conference next month will propose “giving members a greater say in Senate preselections”.
Labor sources quoted by Katherine Murphy of The Guardian claim Shorten’s backing for Kitching was motivated by a desire to harness HSU numbers as he seeks to plug the gap in his factional network created by Conroy’s departure. James Campbell of the Herald Sun earlier reported that the sudden exit of Conroy was causing ructions in the Right, owing to a power-sharing agreement that had been reached between the secretaries of the Australian Workers Union, National Union of Workers, Transport Workers Union and the power bloc associated with state MP Adem Somyurek. It was understood at the time that the TWU vote was a proxy for the broader Conroy group, but it now stood to fall entirely to the union’s secretary, John Berger, leaving Conroy’s other allies out in the cold. Berger’s favoured candidate was Bill Baarini, TWU union officer and former mayor of Hobsons Bay, but Shorten concurred with a view that this would violate the party’s affirmative action rules.
• Further argybargy is unfolding in the Victorian ALP courtesy of a Left faction split between the “National Left”, associated with Anthony Albanese, and the breakaway “Industrial Left” of Victorian Senator Kim Carr. This was formalised after the election when a Left majority resolved to dump Carr from the front bench in favour of Linda Burney, the former New South Wales deputy state leader and newly elected member for Barton. Bill Shorten ensured Carr was accommodated by expanding the front bench, reflecting the importance of the “stability pact” between Carr and the Shorten-Conroy axis in managing affairs the Victorian branch’s affairs. However, the split meant Carr ally Gavin Marshall no longer had Left support to retain his position as Deputy President in the Senate, which has instead gone to Sue Lines from Western Australia.
Marshall last week foreshadowed preselections against Victorian members of the National Left, who include two shadow cabinet members in Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga) and Catherine King (Ballarat) and a junior front-bencher, Andrew Giles (Scullin). As James Massola of Fairfax reports, Marshall confirmed he was organising a challenge to Giles, although no candidate has been identified; claimed there was “discontent in Ballarat”, and that it was a “possibility” he would back a challenge to King; and suggested Macklin could be sure of being spared only because it was “well known that she is retiring”, which a spokesperson for Macklin denied.
• Bob Day, Family First Senator from South Australia, announced last week he would resign from his position after his home building group went into liquidation. Phillip Coorey of the Financial Review reports that Day hopes to be succeeded by his chief-of-staff, Rikki Lambert, who shares his zeal for a pro-business line on workplace relations. However, he faces opposition from Robert Brokenshire, a Liberal-turned-Family First member of the state parliament, and perhaps also Lucy Gichuhi, a Kenyan-born lawyer who was Day’s running mate at the July 2 election.
• A motion moved by Tony Abbott at yesterday’s state council meeting of the New South Wales Liberal Party calling for democratised preselections was reportedly defeated by 246 votes to 174. This was pursued despite the concurrence of Malcolm Turnbull and Mike Baird that the proposed measure should feature among a range of reforms to be considered at a party convention next year, to which state council agreed. Abbott’s proposal would involve plebiscites of party members for all preselections, which is broadly favoured by the party’s hard Right and opposed by the centre Right and the moderates, since it would diminish the importance of the latter’s control of the state executive.
• A poll conducted by Research Now last month for the Australia Institute asked 1426 respondents to list their first and second favoured options for the government to negotiate with in getting legislation through the Senate, which found 54% rating Labor first or second compared with 42% for the Nick Xenophon Team, 32% for the Greens and 29$ for One Nation.
Also, I see that the hashtag #100SG has been created in recognition of the 100 year anniversary of the creation of the position Commonwealth Solicitor General.
Douglas and Milko
#493 Monday, October 24, 2016 at 6:08 pm
Thank you.
I have been vacuuming and dusting and doing much needed housework.
The regimental dog “Abbee” the border collie old age pensioner dog has hardly left my side for the whole tedious enterprise.
Who is the brains of the outfit? Abbee, hands down. I have a couple of bread rolls on my bed wrapped in plastic. Beaucoup sliced beef, tomato, lettuce and onion.
Eventually I woke up.
When the really favourite daughter visits, Abbee shakes with pleasure (I am far too refined to do that) and wags her tail furiously. I think Abbee is telling FD that she never gets fed. It works a treat for her. 🙂
Rewi
They’re a dishonest bunch of bullies.
Rewi
It’s classic ministerial over reach!
KJ
Lucky someones running the show! 😀
A patient in Adelaide’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital died a horrible death after his urinary catheter was hooked up to an oxygen line.
What pinnacle of design has allowed such an inappropriate connection to take place. The principles of poke yoka (or “foolproofing”) should be constantly applied. A good example is left hand threads on BBQ gas bottles and hoses.
http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Or-Pr/Poka-Yoke.html
It’s more than overreach.
Joyce’s response to a letter from his Departmental Secretary concerning Joyce’s integrity in altering the public record of his comments in the parliament was to seek to erase the letter from the public record.
BB
That poor woman. Were the managers sacked? They should have been. Then named and shamed
As a victim of bullying I feel for her.
bk @ #506 Monday, October 24, 2016 at 6:24 pm
With any luck and proper investigation there should never be a repeat.
Colour coding of tubing and connectors may help. Although I seem to remember oxygen tubing as green and other tubes as clear. Medicos would know. This is an extreme case of Murphy’s law.
Extremely sad for all concerned.
Sadly the right are going to see Gleeson’s resignation as a complete validation of their position.
Next cab on the rank will be Gillian Triggs.
I also saw Correy has an article in the AFR on Day
‘Family First Senator Bob Day will postpone his resignation for several more weeks, ensuring he can vote for the government’s bills to re-establish the Australian Building and Construction Commission and to establish a Registered Organisations Commission.’
I wonder what his party and his creditors think.
Read more: http://www.afr.com/news/family-firsts-bob-day-to-vote-for-governments-industrial-relations-bills-20161024-gs97bb#ixzz4NzB1mCEE
There was a suggestion today that the mental health of employees should be part of managers’ (CEOs?) assessments.
That would simply make more employees vulnerable to dismissal to save the boss.
Steven, who knows whether they were sacked? The whole thing is probably under confidentiality. Not even the “NSW government agency” is named.
Recent experience on my part has proved to me that this is the culture in at least some parts of the NSW Public Service. They have their Codes Of Conduct and their Mandatory Policy Directives, but these are for lesser mortals, not for bosses. They are used as weapons, not as guides. The old combination of rubber hose and telephone book is still alive and well.
I have been an eye witness to a lot of what was discussed in the SMH article. I’ve sat in a room and seen someone accused and mobbed, denied the presence of a union rep as Support and intimidated (they hoped) into resignation.
When this behaviour was officially reported, the managers claimed to have been only concerned for the “emotional wellness” of the employee. Their idea was that unemployment would be the best option to save her further suffering in the workplace.
This was said and written with a straight face. Other managers in the organization nodded at the cleverness of the defence, and then adopted it as their own. The employee in question saw these exact words repeated to her from people she had never met, in departments she had never heard of. The people who uttered them to her had not been at the meeting, and knew nothing of the case. “Copy and paste” is alive and well. Once someone hits on a nice turn of phrase, it’s shared out among the rest of the bullies. The employee can expect it from all four points of the compass, and a few in-between.
The idea is to so demoralize the employee, by forcing them to consider that everyone hates them, everyone is against them (no matter how senior) and that the best thing to do is face up to being a bad person and a worse employee, and then to go quietly.
When you don’t go quietly, then they get REALLY nasty.
Land
Here is a chart of the % of annual GDP diverted into land values and dwellings over time:
In 1996 wealth equivalent to 20% of then GDP was tied up (i.e. wasted) in land values.
In 2007 it was close to 150% of then (rather larger than in 1996) GDP.
Wealth sunk in dwellings was about the same in both years.
We seem to have lost the Crank and other defenders of Howard & Costello’s allegedly brilliant economic management but perhaps someone else can explain how spending MUCH more on the same amount of land can add to economic output…
There was a suggestion today that the mental health of employees should be part of managers’ (CEOs?) assessments.
That would simply make more employees vulnerable to dismissal to save the boss.
Lizzie, I am a manager and a certified mental health first aider, albeit in private industry, not the public service. We take health & safety extremely seriously, but I can see that this type of position can be abused.
The Agriculture Secretary and the Solicitor General are jut as much victims of workplace bullying as the employee in the SMH article.
Ditto Gillan Triggs.
The only reason the ABS guy seems to be immune is that he’s a Liberal appointee, and Turnbull went into bat for his crappy census. Millions have been inconvenienced, the web site melted down, the employees haven’t been paid even their out-of-pocket expenses and yet this turkey keeps his job. Turnbull’s call for “Heads to roll” does not apply exactly where it should apply: at the top of the ABS, for the fuck-up senior management perpetrated on the public and their own employees.
High fliers like Gleeson, the Ag guy, Triggs and the ABS wanker have the protection of youth, training, networks and possibly high payouts if they give in early.
Ordinary employees do not have these protections. Employees here on visas don’t have them. Old people don’t have them. Uneducated people the same. These are the people who should be represented by strong unions, not the weak pussies that masquerade themselves as “industrial support” for their members. They see their job as getting on with management. Helping individual employees is not “granular” enough, as one union industrial officer put it to me personally. He told my friend to resign and look for another job. He couldn’t make it – “pressure of work” – to the inevitably adverse interrogation she was about to attend.
So I went instead. She is still employed to this day, over a year later. Fully paid up. It took my friend and I 10 minutes at that interrogation meeting to force management to withdraw their entire dossier of evidence: every last word of it, up in a puff of smoke, all of it had been clearly doctored. So much for resignation to avoid the pain.
I only wish more people had the moxy to stand up to bosses, especially Public Service ones. They are mostly second class managers who can’t get a job in the real world of commerce. They are not across their briefs and they do not understand that rules apply to everyone, not just their underlings.
They can be beaten at their own game.
Guess how many lawsuits Donald trump has on foot right now?
10? 50?
Nope. Try 4000!
https://youtu.be/xusxy2MFd90
Nappin
I understand your position, but some bosses…
Cat,
He’ll be gone on November 9.
Zoomster
You did your job well; you defended them well. Did you get paid?
http://www.theage.com.au/national/public-service/field-workers-who-rescued-census-havent-been-paid–20161020-gs7crk.html
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/coalitions-housing-affordability-inquiry-scrapped-amid-growing-market-fears-20161024-gs9jbo.html
Check out @nobby15’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/nobby15/status/790465204442181632?s=09
Love this
lizzie
Monday, October 24, 2016 at 5:56 pm
Three items on The Drum. Government comes off badly in all three.
Better call the Fixer
GG,
He’ll be gone on November 9.
With only his 4000 lawsuits to keep him warm at night, through the long American Winter and transition from Obama to Hillary Clinton. : )
Another bug. Use the italictag after emoticon; thee emoitcon and following text disappear.
momma,
It’ll only take a couple to question his solvency to run a case, a number of resisters with long pockets (or backers) and plenty of time on their hand and a couple of non-friendly judges to screw him over completely in his dotage.
Yep. As for defending them, mostly all I did was report what I saw on the ground. I criticised them, too.
Sheller
The position potentially offered to Howe is not the position accepted by Gleeson nor the position established in 1916.
So if Howe is prepared to accept the tainted offering from Bollard, is he then qualified for the 1916 role? (if it were ever to be re-established)
zoomster
Monday, October 24, 2016 at 7:21 pm
Yep. As for defending them, mostly all I did was reporu did t what I saw on the ground. I criticised them, too.
Looks like you had a good experience and did well; but other people doing similar are owed $30 million dollars.
It’ll only take a couple to question his solvency to run a case, a number of resisters with long pockets (or backers) and plenty of time on their hand and a couple of non-friendly judges to screw him over completely in his dotage.
I was hoping exactly the same thing! I reckon Warren Buffett could drag Trump under with a Libel suit after Trump questioned Buffet’s taxation status in the 2nd Debate in front of 80 million witnesses! : )
EG Theodore
‘Bollard’. Nice.
moms,
Revenge is that dish you eat very cold!
Morgan has results of a phone poll on immigration (which finds, inter alia, 58% support for “Muslim immigration”), the small print of which shows Labor leading 55-45 on voting intention. Sample: 588.
https://t.co/jn2tLITlyr
I bloody hope so. As it looks his increasingly paranoid rhetoric about the election result suggests the Republicans are gearing up ‘illegitimacy’ on a Clinton win.
A Morgan! I thought they’d gone to pollster heaven or something.
I didn’t think Bob Day would have the hide to delay his resignation so he could vote on the ABCC bill..
If anyone’s vote requires government ministers to skedaddle out of the chamber like gazelles, it would be Bob Day’s.
Turnbull has given up any vestige of the enlightened, exciting Renaissance Man that he started out as.
Bill Shorten should ask Turnbull whether he will accept Day’s vote.
fess,
So what?
60 year old white guys aren’t going to be manning any barricades.
It’s all huff and puff.
Sample size of 588 for that Morgan 2PP.
I’ll take 55/45 from anyone.
zoomster @ #528 Monday, October 24, 2016 at 7:21 pm
But you were level headed and didn’t hype up every minor issue.
You are a complete failure as a Census Crank. 😛
Made the mistake of watching Morrison blather on 7:30. He just spews nonsense with zero vision or any actual point. I got the impression he just wants to talk about affordability in case there is a slump.
Sales for some reason, loses all her ability to interrupt when presented with meaningless blather.
Morgan sounds right to me 🙂
Bemused,
Apparently, you are a complete success as a wanker.
Check out @latingle’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/latingle/status/790473294247899136?s=09
Hope this works does on twitter as love David Rowe cartoon in the article a s well as article itself
BK
Very pleasant to hear mention of poka-yoke. A concept that needs more attention .
greensborough growler @ #544 Monday, October 24, 2016 at 8:00 pm
Yes, I have been taking lessons from you and refining my technique. In another few years I will reach your standard.
I’m with GG on the likelihood that there will be an armed uprising.
US police forces are armed to the teeth. They are far from shy when it comes to killing people.
Many of the forces have military equipment such as armoured vehicles.
They are backed up with state armed forces that include fighter jets and the like.
The biggest threat is not on the streets but in the Reps and the Senate which between them have been busy trying to make US ungovernable.
McCain’s threat to oppose any and all Supreme Court nominees is more of the same.
The other major threat to US democracy is the increasing power of the military. Theatre commanders are virtually plenipotentiaries of the old style of diplomat.
A few million armed and demented nutters is neither here nor there, IMO.
Q
Re: Scomo, yep.
Boerwar
Tomorrow marks the 400th anniversary of a European landing on these shores.You’ll be shocked to learn he was Dutch 🙂
http://www.sharkbay1616.com.au/