Two polls from Bennelong:
• The Daily Telegraph has a Galaxy poll that has nothing separating John Alexander and Kristina Keneally on two-party preferred. The only primary vote numbers provided are 42% for Alexander and 39% for Keneally. Despite Keneally’s strong showing, only 37% rated that Keneally had done a good job as Premier, compared with 42% for bad job. The poll of 579 respondents was conducted on Wednesday evening, following the announcement of Keneally’s candidacy on Monday.
• A slightly less dramatic result from ReachTEL for the Sydney Morning Herald, with John Alexander leading 53-47 on two-party preferred – which nonetheless indicates a swing of over 6%. The primary votes seem to be a shade under 36% for Alexander and around 29% for Keneally. The poll of 864 respondents was conducted on Thursday evening. Alexander’s personal ratings (51.2% favourable versus 15% unfavourable) are rather stronger than Keneally’s (41.6% to 28.1%), and Malcolm Turnbull records a 59.7-40.3 lead as preferred prime minister.
zoomster
I hope that phrase is used a lot in Labor pressers
Injustice does indeed need to be challenged not accepted.
How long until the CPG hail cancelling the Nov 27th sitting week a Trumble Triumph?
So Pyne’s says the Government’s reasoning for the cancelling of the sitting week is that the Government is so devoid of legislation that the House of Reps would have nothing to do until the Senate passes the Smith bill.
So let me get this right, if the postal thingy had come back “NO”, the Government had nothing to raise during two weeks of sitting.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/nov/20/government-accused-avoiding-revolt-parliamentary-sitting-week-cancelled
ratsak @ #2099 Monday, November 20th, 2017 – 9:19 am
One of the West Australian’s hacks declared a few months ago that Trumble was going to turn things around win the next election. Unfortunately I can’t find the link.
KJBar: PM Turnbull again cites Mental As Anything’s “If you leave me can I come to?” when asked his fave AC/DC track @TripleMBrisbane #ACDC
Sh!t.
So Pyne’s says …
should be;
So Pyne says …
Barney:
It’s incredible isn’t it? Fancy admitting outright your govt is basically redundant.
Bw
The birds at Campbell Park – that something rare could exist in the area doesn’t surprise me.
It’s really quite secluded on a road to nowhere in a bit of scruffy ‘who cares’ not worth much of anything to anyone scrub tucked between a steep ridge and the airport perimeter. A home to kangaroos and rabbits.
If the government were facing three or four by-elections, with the possibility that it could actually fall as a result, I would have been the first to defend a Prime Minister who chose to prorogue parliament until the results are in and the numbers are clear.
But to cancel sitting for one week when the government is in no danger of falling, just to bypass a single by-election, is a cowardly dummy-spit and an unbelievably bad look.
Seems like another example of Turnbull’s legendary political acumen (or lack thereof).
What is the legal mechanism to delay the return of Parliament when it is not sitting? Has the speaker got authority from the Parliament to do so, is the PM empowered to do it? Or is the pathetic pet GG just fetching the bone as ordered? Could you imagine a head of state staying so silent during a constitutional crisis where it was clear the deliberate intent of the Government was to subvert the Constitution in any decent country governed by the rule of law?
Just because it isn’t clear to me they’d have the numbers on the floor to pull this off if the Parliament was sitting. They definitely don’t if MPs in breach of the constitution aren’t allowed to vote, but even with them could they get a motion to suspend Parliament through?
The other element here is it frees up Government Members to run around Bennelong.
Boris @ #2062 Monday, November 20th, 2017 – 11:23 am
The Northcote landslide to the Greens may alert other voters to the fact that Liberal and Labor have moved to the right and pushed their environmentalists to the Greens.
Northcote voters have shown others that if the environment for your children is your first preference, vote 1 Green and start filling up the parliament with Green representatives.
WeWantPaul @ #2109 Monday, November 20th, 2017 – 8:38 am
As I understand it the Constitution only requires the Parliament to sit once a year with the next sitting being less than a year from the end of the previous one.
michaelkoziol: Bob Katter is giving a media conference: “Parliament will sit on Monday, whether it sits on a garden lawn or it sits in a building, And it will vote.” #auspol
michaelkoziol: Bob Katter is threatening to convene an insurgent Parliament with Labor, Greens and independents, appoint a speaker and start passing laws without the Coalition #auspol
Is Trumble delaying the sitting week also to delay Newspoll #24?
guytaur @ #1481 Monday, November 20th, 2017 – 12:44 pm
Fantastic !
Jen
You sound like an English teacher I had once, who nastily said that she could not understand my convoluted logic on a King Lear essay, but recognising it was accurate and informative gave me an A+.
Now I have NO problem with anyone asking what i meant. That is more than reasonable.
What I have a problem with is people who having failed to grasp the complexities of what write, rather than asking for clarification abuse me, because that is emotionally easier than admitting they may not fully understand.
I really am not sure I can respect the arguments that brevity is best. Frankly that is the line of the lazy. That is what public servants write for thick head Ministers in briefings. On a blog i would hope for a little more depth. No time pressures etc.
RD
Yep Katter doing that will get the media asking about the legality of changing the sitting date. 😆
Yeah, I’m assuming the sitting times is determined by the P itself, I’m just wondering what mechanism it is for a PM to unilaterally amend the sitting times determined by P?
CUhlmann: It is now perfectly reasonable for Labor to call on the PM to have the sitting as usual and test his mandate on the floor of the House of Reps. This allows ALP to argue he should be calling the GG, not the Speaker.
Briefly
On reflection, I misread your post.
I am accustomed to you conflating Libs and Greens into the same thing, and thought you were referring to all Greens as pop-right.
My apologies.
“The appointment of the times for the holding of sessions of Parliament, the prorogation of
the Parliament and the dissolution of the House, is a matter for decision by the GovernorGeneral.
The Constitution states:
The Governor-General may appoint such times for holding the sessions of the Parliament as he thinks
fit, and may also from time to time, by Proclamation or otherwise, prorogue the Parliament, and may
in like manner dissolve the House of Representatives.1
In practice however these vice-regal prerogatives are exercised with the advice of the
Executive Government.2
Once a Parliament (session), or a further session within that Parliament, has
commenced, the days and times for the routine meetings and adjournments of the House
are a matter for the House to decide, yet in practice, by virtue of its majority support,
these decisions rest with the Executive Government”
OK so the pathetic GG is continuing to let a Government subvert the constitution and now avoid the Parliament altogether, great democracy! Perhaps the Queen is less of a coward than the GG and could step in and restore some kind of functioning democracy in accordance with our Constitution.
OK I’m swinging back to a view that the House is in session (the spring session) just not sitting this week and that a vote of the parliament would be needed to achieve the week’s delay.
michaelkoziol: Katter: “Parliament will sit. We will form Parliament, we’ll appoint a speaker, and we will proceed. And if the Liberal Party don’t want to be there, that is their choice. But we will pass the laws of the land on Monday.” #auspol
dtt’s posts are not complicated…they’re just wrong
No problem Moksha:)
Wow! So now we are cancelling parliament to avoid losing votes? That crisis of legitimacy is looking pretty real. And why can’t we deal with BOTH the ME legislation and a banking RC?
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/nov/20/government-accused-avoiding-revolt-parliamentary-sitting-week-cancelled
russellmahoney: Looking like things are a bit of shambles vs looking like you’re deliberately avoiding looking like things are a bit of shambles.
Scary but I think Katter is right.
Clearly the Liberals learnt nothing from Robert Mugabe on the weekend.
dtt
Sorry, who abused you? when?
So Turnbull has managed to cheese off another one of the crossbenchers upon whom the fate of his government might soon desperately depend. Brilliant.
WWP
If he is and no turns up he could be PM 😉
You make a good point, but the scenarios are different.
With my wife’s case it was a matter of survival.
Due to her age bracket (“over 55”), she was unlikely to get another job (complete with entitlements, paid holidays and so on) paying over $100k per year, no matter how hard she tried or how skilled she was. We either fought or we died (economically).
Yes, we had a pretty good case, too, from both moral and legal points of view. But that wasn’t the No. 1 reason for fighting. I still feel that if management had played it straight – no cock-ups, no falsification of records or other evidence – even our very good case would have been swept away by the exercise of sheer executive power.
You can prove your facts all you like, but when your accusers are your judges (or close mates with your judges), they just brush your factual explanations away and say: “Unacceptable explanation”.
So you might think that arguing the facts is pointless if you’re never going to change anyone’s “official” mind about your “guilt”?
Well, Yes and No.
Arguing the facts has the function of keeping the process alive. It will lead to them privately agreeing you MIGHT have a point. To get around this they change the facts, or invent new ones, or rescue dodgy documents from the recycling bin. They seek retrospective explanations that both refute your case AND cover their arses for all the time and public money wasted. In short they air brush history, assuming you have as little accurate recollection of it as they do.
Then you show they’ve airbrushed history – sometimes by literally putting down their version of a document on the table, and your original accurate copy next to it (preferably with their signature at the bottom to prove it’s certified), to see the differences. Then they go away,but later on try to sneak the dodgy version back into the process, again assuming you’ll never notice. But of course you do.
The aim of the game is not to fight on the facts, but to use the time takenup fighting that fight to force them to make so many errors that no court in the land would accept their case as fairly conducted.
And as soon as the word “court”comes into it (their legal department are probably the only people who advise them frankly that their case is shit) they panic more. It becomes “an industrial risk”. Lovely buzz-word, that. It means insurance claims, Work Cover wars, defamation of character, personal injury, careers and promotions in jeopardy and (in just enough cases to make them realise it’s a possibility) million dollar payouts on top of the hundreds of thousands already wasted.
The “bad news” employee becomes really “bad news”… for them.
The flip side is that in literally 99% of cases the employee is so daunted by the coming process that they just resign. Job done. Every now and again one fights them because they have no other choice.
Which is why my wife’s case is different to the cake shop scenario.
Why ruin a perfectly nice wedding with a long, optional and protracted court case that will cost a fortune and only sully the happy occasion? Why take legal action that will change nobody’s mind? Religious nuts believe they’ll go to hell if they serve a cake to a gay couple. Homophobes will always be homophobes.
Like my wife’s employers you won’t change their minds with legal action, even successful legal action. All you can do is get them to change their behaviour, and only if forced to do so. Who’d want to buy a cake from them in those circumstances? At what cost?
Just get another cake, unless there’s only one cake shop. And then you might haveto take them on, as my wife was forced to do, but only then.
I jokingly suggested a few weeks ago that Turnbull’s only strategy seemed to be to drip feed ineligible MPs through the HC so that he could remain in power. Yet that now appears to be his actual strategy.
“What is the legal mechanism to delay the return of Parliament when it is not sitting? Has the speaker got authority from the Parliament to do so, is the PM empowered to do it? Or is there pathetic pet GG just fetching the bone as ordered?”
This is delaying a scheduled sitting of Parliament by one week. It’s not a prorougation. Being just a schedule change, I don’t think there are any particular requirements or restrictions. There would be no requirement for the GG to be involved or to approve the change. Changes to the schedule are fairly common, e.g. adding extra sitting days to catch up. Rejigging when an election is called.
“This is delaying a scheduled sitting of Parliament by one week. It’s not a prorougation. Being just a schedule change, I don’t think there are any particular requirements or restrictions. There would be no requirement for the GG to be involved or to approve the change. Changes to the schedule are fairly common, e.g. adding extra sitting days to catch up. Rejigging when an election is called.”
Yeah but it is the Parliament that can do that, not the PM, and it is unclear if the PM can actually get a motion through the Parliament, so it seems clear to me that Katter is within his rights. Hope Shorten backs him up. Obviously, if the PM had the numbers, or the Opp leader supported him, it would be stupid to fly everyone to Canberra to hold a vote to rise for the week, but that isn’t the case as far as I know.
BB
No matter how you argue it. To roll back existing discrimination law is to argue rolling back existing discrimination law.
Just as you would not argue doing that for a Jew a black or an interracial couple asking for a cake for a wedding from a business in law so it is with gay people.
The case may be an exception that proves the law but thats exactly what it does it proves the law.
Chris Uhlmann
Chris Uhlmann
@CUhlmann
·
22m
Trapped in transit and catching up on the decision to abandon next week’s sitting. The reasons are spurious. The test of a Government is its ability to command the numbers on the floor of the House of Reps.
4
16
Chris Uhlmann
Chris Uhlmann
@CUhlmann
·
20m
There is nothing to stop the Government from sitting longer and no reason to delay next week, beyond the fear of chaos in the House of Reps. So this move creates the appearance of a Government running scared. Is that wise?
3
Chris Uhlmann
Chris Uhlmann
@CUhlmann
·
12m
It should be noted that the Government does not have the power to forestall a sitting of the Senate. What would happen if the cross-bench in the Lower House combined to demand Parliament return as scheduled?
2
Chris Uhlmann
Chris Uhlmann
@CUhlmann
·
15m
In three years of the minority Gillard Government I cannot recall a similar move. There is plenty for Parliament to do next week, beyond waiting for the Senate to finish debating SSM bill.
3
26
Chris Uhlmann
Chris Uhlmann
@CUhlmann
·
18m
It is now perfectly reasonable for Labor to call on the PM to have the sitting as usual and test his mandate on the floor of the House of Reps. This allows ALP to argue he should be calling the GG, not the Speaker.
The darling of the Right and a Murdoch hero heads to trial (Oz headline):
Malcolm Mugabe.
I had a similar conversation to the one with BB at our last branch meeting.
One of the older women couldn’t understand why young women were making a fuss about men putting their hands on their knees. (Which was downplaying what sexual harrassment actually is, but I let that one go).
She then outlined several cases in her youth where she dealt with molesters without either confronting them directly or reporting them.
The implication being, as always, that if she could do it, so could other women.
I kept saying “but what about others? How did what you did stop the man molesting other girls in the future?” but she kept brushing this aside.
Yes, I too dealt with my mother’s friends, who liked to run their hands up my legs or tongue kiss me when I was told I had to kiss them goodbye. It doesn’t mean I should have had to.
My bad Katter is wrong:
“Standing
order 30 now gives standing authorisation for the Speaker when the House is not sitting
to set an alternative day or hour for the next meeting, but such action would only be taken
at the request of the Government.
”
“30 Changes to meeting times
The Speaker or a Minister may initiate a change to the meeting times of
the House in the following circumstances:
(a) At any time, a Minister may move without notice a motion to set
the next meeting of the House.
(b) A Minister may move on notice a motion to set a future meeting
or meetings of the House.
(c) When the House is not sitting, the Speaker may set an alternative
day or hour for the next meeting, and must notify each Member of
any change.”
So Parliament has given the Government power to do this.
citizen
Yep. I remember the days when many took KJackson at her word. It was so easy to see what a huge bona fide fraud she was.
Solar heads to 1c/kWh before 2020 after Mexico sets record low
http://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-heads-to-1ckwh-before-2020-after-mexico-sets-record-low-62163/
I am not arguing discrimination law should be rolled back.
I’m arguing that if you take everything to court, then you’re in for a world of pain.
Leave the laws exactly how they are, but choose your litigation wisely and efficiently.
When I was at Law School a standard question in 1st semester Legal Method was “Legality is not Morality: discuss”.
…and (just to cover bases), I’m not having any sort of go at you, BB. It just reminded me.
Of all the crossbenchers, I think Cathy McGowan is the only one the government has so far failed to completely alienate. It’s probably only a matter of time.
It’s an interesting one.
I reckon the Kat in the Hat isn’t completely wrong. If the members all show up on the 27th and decide to Parliament it would be a big call for the GG to just ignore them if they voted in a Speaker and passed no confidence.
Could or would the Speaker set security on MPs that showed up to the House? On what authority? It’s one thing to have a bunch of MPs turn up unannounced and try a stunt on when the majority didn’t schedule sittings, but if they turn up in sufficient numbers to demonstrate that the majority did not authorise the cancelling of that sitting week?
Trumble had to prorogue before the DD because the Senate sets it’s own rules and wasn’t having a bar of him telling them not to sit.
He hasn’t prorogued this time, just asked the Speaker to change the sitting dates, but that is still surely only delegated from the House. If the majority of the house want to sit then how can they legally be prevented? He could go off and see General Pete, but with two MPs out the question of confidence is legitimate. Especially if Indi and Mayo indicate that they want to sit and get an RC up. Even Gorgeous George could say he wants to be in Canberra that week. The GG would be correct to expect something more than Trumble’s word that he actually has confidence.
This week’s fuck up is off to a flying start.
Never doubt Brian!