New year news

What’s next for Kristina Keneally; the trouble with Victorian Labor; George Brandis’s Senate vacancy; new hopefuls for a resurgent ALP in Western Australia; and more.

Ring in the new year with two months of accumulated news concerning preselections for the next federal election – not counting matters arising from Section 44, which will be dealt with in a separate post during the January lull in opinion poll news.

• After falling short in the Bennelong by-election, Kristina Keneally’s most immediate pathway to federal parliament is the Senate vacancy created by the resignation of Sam Dastyari. However, The Australian reports the position is being eyed by Tony Sheldon, national secretary of the Transport Workers Union, and Tara Moriarty, state secretary of United Voice – either in opposition to Keneally or in her absence, since it is not clear she would not prefer to await a lower house berth. The Canberra Times reports the looming creation of a third electorate for the Australian Capital Territory could present such an opportunity. Other possibilities mentioned for the new seat are Thomas McMahon, economic adviser to Bill Shorten; Taimus Werner-Gibbings, chief-of-staff to Tasmanian Senator Lisa Singh; Jacob Ingram, 23-year-old staffer to Chief Minister Andrew Barr; Jacob White, staffer to Fenner MP and Shadow Assistant Trade Minister Andrew Leigh; and Kim Fischer, former territory ministerial staffer and current communications consultant.

• Another soon-to-be-created seat has been central to factional convulsions in the Victorian ALP in recent months. As in the ACT, population growth has entitled Victoria to an extra seat, which is expected to be established in Melbourne’s booming and strongly Labor-voting north-east. The Construction Mining Forestry and Energy Union wants it to go to Jane Garrett, who recently failed in a bid to move from her state seat of Brunswick to the Legislative Council after losing a Left faction ballot. Garrett feared Brunswick would be lost to the Greens, in part because of the efforts of the United Firefighters Union, whose dispute with Garrett over a pay deal caused her resignation as Emergency Services Minister in 2016. In tandem with other “industrial Left” unions, the CFMEU has walked out of the Left, which is dominated by Senator Kim Carr, and sought an alliance with the Right, which looks likely to proceed with the blessing of Bill Shorten. This will mean an end to the long-standing “stability pact” between the Carr forces and the Right, which has protected members including Jenny Macklin in Jagajaga and Andrew Giles in Scullin. However, Shorten insists he will ensure no sitting members are threatened.

• With George Brandis resigning from his Queensland Senate seat to take up the popular posting of high commissioner in London, The Australian reports a big field of potential successors includes three names from state politics: Scott Emerson, the former Shadow Treasurer who lost his seat of Maiwar to the Greens; John-Paul Langbroek, a former Opposition Leader who remains the state member for Surfers Paradise, but was unsuccessful in the post-election leadership vote; and Lawrence Springborg, repeatedly unsuccessful state Opposition Leader who did not contest the election in November (who would presumably faces a difficulty in being from the Nationals). Also in the mix are Joanna Lindgren, who had an earlier stint in the Senate when she filled Brett Mason’s vacancy in May 2015, but was unsuccessful as the sixth candidate on the Liberal National Party ticket in 2016; Teresa Harding, director of the Queensland government’s open data policy and twice unsuccessful candidate for Blair; and Amanda Stoker, a barrister.

• Surf Coast councillor Libby Coker has again been preselected as Labor’s candidate for the Victorian seat of Corangamite, after winning a local party vote over Geelong businesswoman Diana Taylor by 116 votes to 39. Coker ran unsuccessfully in 2016 against Sarah Henderson, who gained the seat for the Liberals in 2013.

• Mehreen Faruqi, a state upper house member, was preselected to lead the Greens’ New South Wales ticket in late November, winning an online vote of party members by a margin variously identified as 1301 to 843, and 1032 to 742. The preselection took place against a backdrop of conflict between the more moderate environmentalist tendency associated with the parliamentary leadership and Rhiannon’s hard left base in New South Wales. Anne Davies of The Guardian observes that Rhiannon will face “intense pressure to step down early”, so Faruqi can fill her vacancy and raise her profile ahead of the election.

Labor has completed preselections for the brace of Liberal-held seats where it is now reckoned to be competitive in Western Australia, after the resurgence in its fortunes in the state – all of which have gone to women:

• Hannah Beazley, policy adviser to Mark McGowan and daughter of Kim Beazley, will run against Steve Irons in Swan, which her father held from 1980 to 1996 before seeking a safer refuge in Brand. Hannah Beazley ran unsuccessfully for the state seat of Riverton in 2013.

• Lauren Palmer of the Maritime Union of Australia has been selected to run against Ken Wyatt in Hasluck, winning out over the Left-backed Bill Leadbetter, a history lecturer who ran in the seat in 2016, and very briefly served in the state upper house earlier this year. This comes after the MUA threw its lot in with the now dominant Right (“Progressive Labor”) faction in pursuit of its oft-thwarted ambitions to establish a parliamentary power base, together with the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union.

• Decorated police superintendent and Left faction member Kim Travers has been chosen to run against newly anointed Attorney-General Christian Porter in Pearce. Sarah Martin of The West Australian reported Labor’s administrative committee knocked back a nomination from Ann O’Neill, a campaigner against domestic violence whose estranged husband shot her and murdered her two children in 1994, who had not been a party member for the required period and was not granted a waiver.

• A little further up the pendulum, Melita Markey, chief executive of the Asbestos Diseases Society, will run against Michael Keenan in Stirling, and Melissa Teede, former head of the Peel Development Commission, will run against Andrew Hastie in Canning.

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.

3,217 comments on “New year news”

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  2. Andrew:


    And it doesn’t just have to be about usefulness, abstract maths is just as enthralling to children if you explain it properly and don’t assume they can’t understand.

    Indeed.

    The Two Unit General course in NSW was designed to make it ‘relevant’ and ‘useful’ to students who would struggle with the concepts of the Two Unit Advanced (or Extension 1 or 2) course.

    Thus, there are useful things like being able to work out areas and volumes, financial maths, mortgages, and so on.

    However, the students in general find that sort of thing hard going, and difficult to get enthusiastic about. What they really love is the abstract algebra part of the course!

    The 2UG course is close to useless for university studies. This has finally been recognised by many universities, who used to pretend that you could do a quickie catch up course and be proficient in calculus in a few weeks, probably to get bums on seats, who cares if they drop out, the Universities get the funding because of the numbers.

  3. So is Turnbull offering Victoria more money for policing to help Victoria with their “crime wave”? Did Victoria ask for Federal help? Or have the “Liberals” reached for the dogwhistle again.

  4. POLITUCATION: @MhairiHunter Immorality, despicable personalities aside, there’s an obvious option for State Ed. policy – the Finnish Model – currently leading the world; much useful research has been done; the wider frame: increased critical thinking ‘bad news’ for Tories = aim for mediocrity

  6. LU:

    It is good for delivering content, but I’m limited in how far I can push it as an assessment tool because I cannot tell if the student has actually done the task. So we are still using pen and paper in tutes and exams.

    Indeed. I gave up on out of class assignments for credit once I realised that parents or tutors were doing the work, and the student served it up as their own.

    English teachers must find this a severe restriction – it makes the worthwhile task of creating a good essay (say) over a period of weeks unable to be marked in a meaningful way.

  7. poroti @ #48 Tuesday, January 2nd, 2018 – 8:49 am

    The GG doing what Rupes’ papers do best. What a headline !

    Muslims, extremists share goal.

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/islamic-terrorism-myth-and-conspiracy-theory-build-augmented-reality/news-story/51cb67316bb78ccab063a16e8605df56

    Forget the headline – read the byline …

    Sherry Sufi is chairman of the West Australian Liberal Party’s policy committee. He was the Liberal candidate for Fremantle at the 2016 federal election but resigned after the emergence of a recording in which he impersonated WA parliament Speaker Michael Sutherland’s South African accent using crude language.

    LOL!

  8. BenOquist: Analysis via @TheAusInstitute Climate & Energy Program found 14% of coal & gas fleet failed during the Feb 2017 heatwave tai.org.au/content/coal-a… pic.twitter.com/aGYkUUkFpT

  9. Smearing Mueller shows the depths of Republican fear

    The campaign to discredit Special Counsel Robert Mueller has reached a shrill and desperate phase, as some believe it is more important to protect Donald Trump’s interests than to establish how and why an adversarial government influenced a presidential election.

    The goal is to dismiss any findings damaging to the president as political bias; to invent corruption in the highest echelons of law enforcement, notably in the FBI; and to preempt any discovery of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia with distractions.

    https://www.rawstory.com/2018/01/smearing-mueller-shows-the-depths-of-republican-fear/

  10. BigD

    And why wasn’t Kerr open and honest with Whitlam?

    Because at any hint of removing Whitlam, Whitlam would likely fire off a telegram to the Queen to remove Kerr.

    This does not create an environment where the two can work openly together to try deal with the issues.

    You create the environment where they can work together and ’75 probably doesn’t occur.

    This completely misses the point about ’75. The majority in the Senate had decided to force the House of Reps to an election. That is, the chamber that is conservatively constituted, that is mal-apportioned, that has no role in the formation of governments, that has no power to raise money bills, had chosen to impose its will on the chamber that is democratically constituted and which is th seat of government.

    There was no sense in which “working together” could be meaningful. Either the House prevailed or the Senate prevailed. There is no third solution. If the HoS had better tenure, the Senate, knowing it could better rely on the HoS, would have been even more emboldened.

    You prefer to have an agent that sits above the political fray and that can dispose of a PM and their government. This is not merely anti-republican, it is monarchist, it is anti-democratic and it relies on an elision – on the false supposition that a monarch’s role is not political. Of course, it is deeply political. In a democracy, political authority stems from voters and is conferred by their democratic, popular expression. We can have a monarchy or a democracy, but, as long as a HoS has the power to dissolve the House against its will, we cannot have both.

  11. ddiazpilas: One of the #graphs that better summarize the impressive progress in Li-ion #battery technology that is making #electricvehicles a reality pic.twitter.com/YnL1rmkUyj

  13. https://electrek.co/2017/12/28/shenzhen-electrifies-entire-public-transit-fleet-electric-buses/

    This is significant, albeit a little baffling.

    Having half your bus fleet on charge at any one given time is a very inefficient use of capital. To get a proper bang for buck for heavy vehicles (prime movers and buses) operators rally need to sweat the asset. A large scale operation like a bus company should be aiming to have the asset on the road for 2o+ hours per day, 6 days per week, with one day for scheduled maintenance.

    I recall reading an interview with the development head of Mercedes Benz/ Chrysler earlier this year. He announced a change in direction re future development. According to this guy Tesla had ‘won’ the debate & for passenger and light commercial vehicles the future would be electric with large battery packs. However for heavy commercial the future was still in electric – fuel cell vehicles and the key reasons for the diachotomy were range, capital costs and refueling verses recharging times:

    For passenger / light commercial vehicles having a range of 500km or thereabouts is fine. Even with Long recharge times. That’s because most passenger vehicles are only used a few hours per day. Even for couriers and light commercial vehicle owner/operators that’s good enough: there is no need or desirability to have a fuel cell because even after decades of development costs are proving prohibitive.

    However, for heavy commercials the equation is different. Fuel cells are likely to prove cost effective. Heavy vehicles each cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and if fuel cell costs come down to below $100K then that can be amortised into the fixed/standing costs of the vehicle quite efficiently. Especially when compared to the alternative of having half your fleet idle at any given time whilst recharging. Perhaps the most attractive aspect of fuel cells vs battery storage is potential weight savings for the former when compared to the later, especially for heavy haulage: every kg saved in the tare weight of the vehicle is another kg of freight that can be carried.

    In between this diachomoy are some specialist transport industries, like taxis – where the asset is typically double shifted. Australian taxis are already hybrids and it will be interesting to see how that industry adapts. I suspect that there will be a future shift a way from taxi fleets to Uber type operations where electric-battery vehicles are used but they are not double shifted.

    Of course the 500 pound gorilla in the room is automation: Humans owning and driving vehicles of any description may not even be a thing in a decade or so. …

  14. Don: “However, the students in general find that sort of thing hard going, and difficult to get enthusiastic about. What they really love is the abstract algebra part of the course!”

    Amen to that. One of my favorite lessons with my year 6s involves the area of a circle. I take them through a calculus-like process, dividing the circle into concentric rings, straightening the rings into long rectangles, arranging the rectangles into a triangle, finding the area of the triangle, and relating that area back to the original circle.

    At no point do I use the word calculus, and I keep it visual rather than formal as much as possible – but calculus is what I’m doing, although that is a good three years away in the formal curriculum. And at no point do I talk about why any of this might be useful. I’m just playing with the patterns. But that’s what maths is all about. And they gobble it up.

    The basic concepts of maths are often not that hard! Formal precision is difficult. But there’s a lot of value in imparting even a fuzzy picture of the beauty of its logic – that’s what kids (and adults) can follow and love.

  16. Steve777

    Plain and simply the fiberals have gone for the dog whistle again.

    And as pointed out already, is Turnbull offering funding for community programs to help with the “gang crisis”, or as has been shown so far by him, his fellow travellers and the msm, a partisan bashing of Vic govt.

  18. Player One @ #46 Tuesday, January 2nd, 2018 – 7:47 am

    TallebudgeraLurker @ #20 Tuesday, January 2nd, 2018 – 8:01 am

    Since Snowy Hydro is owned by the three Governments and the haggle is on about the two states selling out to the Commonwealth, I can see how Snowy Hydro will finance the project, backed by the Commonwealth with the project off the Federal Budget (just as the NBN was originally off the Federal Budget) {of course, I would be happy to be corrected by any finance bludgers who know more than I do}.

    The cost of buying out one or more of the owners of the current Snowy Hydro scheme (Snowy 1.0) should not be conflated with the cost of building the new Snowy Hydro scheme (Snowy 2.0).

    P1,
    Agreed, the price is what it is ‘worth’ at the time of the transaction, I wasn’t suggesting that the value be inflated by the cost of a future project although sunk costs so far for the proposed Snowy 2.0 project that otherwise would have flowed to the two states as returns (profits) would be in the mix.
    However, if the Commonwealth doesn’t buy out NSW and Vic, then I imagine that they (the NSW and Vic State Govenments) will (i) need to agree to the Snowy 2.0 project proceeding since they collectively currently own 87 % of Snowy Hydro and (ii) will need to fund their respective shares (somehow).

  19. Good morning all,

    I think it would be wise to wait until summer is over before anyone,including Turnbull, Hunt, Shorten and state and territory leaders, starts ramping up the rhetoric over the superiority and effectiveness (or not ) of one form of power generation over another.

    There is a long hot summer ahead.

    Cheers and a great day to all.

  20. Doyley

    Mr Oquist is using facts.

    He quotes February 2017 heatwave. Thats almost a year ago.

    He then quotes Tesla performance already proven. In current heatwaves.

    No need for Labor to wait. Data is there.

  21. PhoenixRed

    I’m with counterchekist on this……..

    Counterchekist
    @counterchekist
    ·
    6h
    The investigation into #KremlinGate didn’t begin with Papadopolous’ drunken buffoonery. It began long before that when SIGINT tapes were given to DCA Brennan of Russian dark money being laundered into US election campaigns. NYT, once again, has distorted reality.

  23. AE and P1

    Not baffling. China is testing all methods for its major government policy of reducing carbon and pollution emissions.

    They find clean air more efficient for health reasons of productivity of the population. Long charging times of shifts of buses a small price to pay.

    Of course when shorter charging times come along then changing the model will happen.

  24. PeeBee

    Once I was in a group of 20 people bushwalking at Melrose (and other places) and decided to have dinner at the Melrose pub. Two tables of ten people each. Unbeknown to anyone, it turned out one table was made up entirely of people who had taught at some stage in their life and the other table comprised of people who had never taught.

    Since maths is the topic de jour it seems worth noting that the probability of that seating arrangement happening by chance is very small.

  25. Maths teaching suffers (often) from being the second subject for PE teachers.

    I was taught Year 10 maths by a PE teacher. When I asked him why a certain aspect of maths was relevant, it was obvious he had no idea.

    At our local school, our specialist Maths teacher was part time. The PE/Maths staff were in the habit of sending ‘stuck’ students, particularly at the Senior level, to her. So it wasn’t uncommon to see VCE Maths students drifting through the corridors, unable to progress because it was her day off.

    Some of the PE teachers were good Maths teachers. It’s just it wasn’t ‘their’ subject, the one they were passionate about.

    My sons, both naturally gifted Maths students (it comes from their father’s side, who are all bankers and accountants) talk of teaching as a fall back option – ‘if the worst comes to the worst, I can always teach’ . It’s not money so much, it’s just that teaching isn’t for everybody, however much we want them to do it.

  26. victoria says: Tuesday, January 2, 2018 at 9:22 am

    PhoenixRed

    I’m with counterchekist on this……..

    Counterchekist The investigation into #KremlinGate didn’t begin with Papadopolous’ drunken buffoonery. It began long before that when SIGINT tapes were given to DCA Brennan of Russian dark money being laundered into US election campaigns. NYT, once again, has distorted reality.

    *****************************************************

    There seems to be a bit of a battle between the NYT and the WaPo at the moment with the WaPo accusing the NYT of downplaying any evidence of Russian interference …… and LMensch has written a post today on how the NYT has been hacked ….and included this paragraph ( usual grain of salt applies I guess ) which backs up what you are saying, Victoria

    “The Times most recently published a story detailing how George Papadopolous confided to an Australian diplomat in London that the Russians had hacked Secretary Clinton; this story ran with the factually false headline “How the Russia Inquiry Began”. (The BBC’s Paul Wood had already reported, nearly a year earlier, that a six-agency task force including the FBI was started in April 2016; James Comey testified that Russian attempts to interfere in the US election process were known to him from 2015 onwards)”.

    https://patribotics.blog/2018/01/01/exclusive-new-york-times-moscow-hack-compromised-papers-emails/

  28. P1

    The graph speaks for itself.

    You may not like it.

    Thats the facts as Volkswagen published it. So unless you are accusing VW of being dodgy again accept that VW is presenting facts.

    Given its trying to regain reputation dodgy graphs by VW is the last thing they want.

  29. guytaur @ #73 Tuesday, January 2nd, 2018 – 9:27 am

    Long charging times of shifts of buses a small price to pay.

    That was the point. It is not a “small” price to pay – it is a massive cost to have to have twice as many buses as you need in your fleet, because half of them have to be on charge at any one time. Adopting this technology now is clearly primarily for its PR value and to reduce visual pollution. Clearly this would currently only be contemplated in a place like Shenzen.

    Stuff like this makes you realize that battery technology still has a long way to go – a decade or more, as your own graph predicts. And it probably won’t be lithium ion.

  31. P1

    Unlike you China is looking at the wholistic price to society. Not the cost to one company. They have calculated the wholistic price is worth it.

    Something a Communist Dictatorship can do that a capitalist the bottom line for individual companies rule cannot.

  33. @P1 – if it were that significant a cost, they would have elected for battery swapping, rather than charging while the battery is in the bus.

    People claiming that heavy vehicles need to be used all the time clearly have never caught public transport.

    Public transport has this thing called ‘rush hour’. A small period of time in the morning and afternoon where all the fleet is needed. Then, during the rest of the day, much of the fleet sits idle because people don’t need buses every 3 minutes at 3 am.

    They’ll have coordinated their charging schedule so nothing is being charged for peak periods.

  35. Hi Zoomster,
    It sounds like you are not satisfied with the course you are doing (assisting at risk readers) via University of London.
    That’s a shame as it is a well-researched area. Their course may well be at fault.
    A good, evidence based course on similar topics is offered in Australia at Macquarie University, and can be done externally. You can study just one subject, or do a post grad diploma or a M Sp Ed.
    They’ve also published helpful papers about education methods, and debunked a few myths too. See:
    https://www.mq.edu.au/research/research-centres-groups-and-facilities/healthy-people/centres/macquarie-university-special-education-centre-musec/community-outreach-overview/musec-briefings

    Regarding my comment about teacher training over forty years, we are seeing teachers who were trained in older methods retire now, taking their skills with them. New teacher graduates will be working in the system for the next forty years.

  36. P1

    Of course if charging batteries was a big cost as you are trying to claim then trams would replace the buses. Just use the existing electricity lines model proven to work in cities around the world.

    Melbourne is a good example of this technology

  37. briefly @ #60 Tuesday, January 2nd, 2018 – 5:08 am

    BigD

    And why wasn’t Kerr open and honest with Whitlam?

    Because at any hint of removing Whitlam, Whitlam would likely fire off a telegram to the Queen to remove Kerr.

    This does not create an environment where the two can work openly together to try deal with the issues.

    You create the environment where they can work together and ’75 probably doesn’t occur.

    This completely misses the point about ’75. The majority in the Senate had decided to force the House of Reps to an election. That is, the chamber that is conservatively constituted, that is mal-apportioned, that has no role in the formation of governments, that has no power to raise money bills, had chosen to impose its will on the chamber that is democratically constituted and which is th seat of government.

    There was no sense in which “working together” could be meaningful. Either the House prevailed or the Senate prevailed. There is no third solution. If the HoS had better tenure, the Senate, knowing it could better rely on the HoS, would have been even more emboldened.

    It has been said that Whitlam was not far from braking the Senate deadlock.

    With more open dealings between Whitlam and Kerr, Whitlam would have been aware that time was running out and Kerr may have been more hesitant to act in light of a possible solution.

    How would you resolve this kind of impasse?
    What difference would a new GG make?

    You prefer to have an agent that sits above the political fray and that can dispose of a PM and their government. This is not merely anti-republican, it is monarchist, it is anti-democratic and it relies on an elision – on the false supposition that a monarch’s role is not political. Of course, it is deeply political. In a democracy, political authority stems from voters and is conferred by their democratic, popular expression. We can have a monarchy or a democracy, but, as long as a HoS has the power to dissolve the House against its will, we cannot have both.

    You seem to have a problem with oversight, labelling it “anti-democratic” but experience suggests that more oversight of our Parliament is needed as demonstrated by the calls for a federal ICAC.

    Surely such a body would be equally “anti-democratic” and those pesky unelected HC judges throwing out Parliamentarians the people had elected.

    Step back from your Utopian principles and labels, and start talking about the real world.

  39. Guytaur the VW ad is dodgy. It’s a marketing tool not a graph. The time axis is deliberately fudged to imply the “impressive progress in Li-ion #battery technology” you speak of.

  41. Zoomster, I totally agree with your point about the importance of passion in teaching maths. Two maths teachers in my family, both passionate about maths.
    But these days it’s the bureaucracy (in NSW, anyway) which is sucking the life out of the teachers.

  42. Kevjohhno

    There are limits to marketing spin.

    It has to have some basis in reality. Just like when Apple does its marketing.

    Get too far from the truth and you end up in trouble for false misleading advertising. There are laws around that. The EU has some strict ones.

  43. JW that is one for Andrew or Don (and maybe BK).

    What is the chance of 10 ex-teachers grouping together when a population of 20 people (10 of who are ex-teachers) are randomly split into two groups?

  46. guytaur @ #81 Tuesday, January 2nd, 2018 – 9:48 am

    Unlike you China is looking at the wholistic price to society. Not the cost to one company. They have calculated the wholistic price is worth it.

    Something a Communist Dictatorship can do that a capitalist the bottom line for individual companies rule cannot.

    Perhaps, but China is not being altruistic here – this is about self-preservation. China has a massive diesel particulate pollution problem which they are desperate to address because it is causing them to have to shutdown factories for extended periods and literally killing their own citizenry by the hundreds of thousands per year. Unsurprisingly, the citizenry objects to that, and so this is in turn threatening the stability of the government.

    In the process, they believe they have a chance to dominate the world’s manufacturing of electric vehicles. They may succeed, which is not good news for other more ethical manufacturers.

    Finally, it is “holistic”, not “wholistic” 🙂

  48. Should persons seeking private funds for a cause have disclosure obligations?

    Here on PB we know what we get eg opinions from Victorians etc.

    But what about legal defence funds such as for Mark Latham or funding of his media? Should he be obliged to disclose what his lawyers etc are being paid and what will happen to any excess funds?

    I assume the donors are likely to be people of limited means.

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