Friday free-for-all

As the wheels begin to turn ahead of a federal election that might be held later this year, a round-up of recent preselection news.

No BludgerTrack update this week as there were no new opinion polls, which might be an issue from time to time now that Essential Research has gone from weekly to fortnightly. Newspoll and Essential will presumably both report next week, followed by a week off for Easter. So in lieu of any polling to analyse, I offer one of my occasional updates on federal preselection action.

Most of this relates to Queensland, where a federal redistribution will formally take effect next week – not that you would notice, as my calculations at the time the draft was published last year found no seat’s margin had changed by more than 0.6%. Nonetheless, BludgerTrack will henceforth be using the post-redistribution margins for it seats result projections. Redistributions for Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory, which will each gain a new seat, and South Australia, which will lose one, are presently in their early stages, and are likely to be finalised around September.

• Following his appointment as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, George Brandis’s Queensland Liberal Senate vacancy has been filled by Brisbane barrister Amanda Stoker. Stoker won a vote of the Liberal National Party state council from a field of 12, of whom the other reported frontrunners were Joanna Lindgren, who had a stint in the Senate after filling a casual vacancy in May 2015, but was unsuccessful as the sixth candidate on the LNP ticket in 2016; Amanda Camm, a Mackay regional councillor; Andrew Wines, a Brisbane City councillor; and Teresa Harding, director of the Queensland government’s open data policy and twice unsuccessful candidate for Blair. Stoker was a favourite candidate of religious conservatives, and emphasised the point by speaking at a pro-life rally on Sunday. In this she makes a contrast with Brandis, a noted moderate.

• Labor’s candidate to take on Peter Dutton in his Brisbane seat of Dickson is Ali France, a motivational speaker and former television producer who lost a leg in a car accident in 2011, whose father is former Bligh government minister Peter Lawlor. France is aligned with the Left, and won preselection ahead of the Right’s Linda Lavarch, former state Attorney-General and wife of Keating government Attorney-General Michael Lavarch, who cut Dutton’s margin from 6.7% to 1.6% when she ran in 2016. The redistribution has slightly improved Dutton’s position, increasing his margin to 2.0%. Since winning preselection, France has faced media scrutiny over her past pronouncements against offshore detention, which have since been removed from her social media accounts.

• The Cairns Post reports Elida Faith, of the Left faction Community and Public Sector Union, has won Labor preselection for the Cairns and Cape York Peninsula seat of Leichhardt. Faith first won endorsement to run as the Left’s candidate ahead of Tania Major, an indigenous youth advocate and former Young Australian of the Year, and Allan Templeton, an electrician. She then won the preselection vote over Richie Bates, a Cairns Regional Councillor and member of the Right. Leichhardt has been held for the Liberals and then the LNP since 1996 by Warren Entsch, except following his temporary retirement in 2007, after which the seat was held for a term by Jim Turnour of Labor.

• Jo Briskey, chief executive of parent advocacy organisation The Parenthood and a former organiser with the Left faction United Voice union, will be Labor’s candidate in the Brisbane seat of Bonner. Briskey won preselection ahead of Delena Amsters, a physiotherapist aligned with the Right. While Bonner is a naturally marginal seat, Labor’s only win since its creation in 2004 came in 2007, and it has at all other times been held by the present LNP incumbent, Ross Vasta.

• Anika Wells, a lawyer with Maurice Blackburn, appears set to succeed the retiring Wayne Swan in Lilley. Wells has Swan’s endorsement, and shares his alignment with the Australian Workers Union sub-faction of the Right.

• Zac Beers, former industrial painter and scaffolder and organiser for the Right faction Australian Workers Union, has been preselected for a second run at the central Queensland seat of Flynn, where he cut LNP member Ken O’Dowd’s margin from 6.5% to 1.0% in 2016. Beers won preselection ahead of Gordon Earnshaw, a worker for Bechtel Power Corporation.

• Andrew Bartlett, who filled the Greens’ Queensland Senate vacancy arising from Larissa Waters’ Section 44 disqualification last year, will seek and presumably win preselection in the lower house seat of Brisbane. This leaves the field clear for Waters to seek to recover her Senate seat. Brisbane has been in conservative hands since 2010, and has been held for the LNP since 2016 by Trevor Evans. Bartlett ran for the Greens in 2010, his first entry with the party after his former life as leader of the Australian Democrats.

Meanwhile in New South Wales, Labor has preselected its candidates for the Sydney seats of Banks and Reid, where it suffered historically unusual defeats in 2013 and 2016. In turn:

• The candidate in Banks will again be Chris Gambian, an official with the Left faction Community and Public Sector Union, who halved the 2.8% Liberal margin when he ran in 2016. The Australian reports Gambian won a preselection ballot ahead of Lucy Mannering, a lawyer and the ex-wife of former Australian Workers Union national secretary Paul Howes, by 139 votes to 116, as adjusted by the affirmative action loading. The member for the seat is David Coleman, who became the first Liberal to win the seat since 1949 when he gained it in 2013.

• Labor’s candidate in Reid will be Sam Crosby, executive director of Labor think tank the McKell Institute. Crosby easily won preselection ahead of local branch member Frank Alafaci, by 120 votes to 19. Reid has been held by Craig Laundy since 2013, when he became the first Liberal ever to win the seat.

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.

1,530 comments on “Friday free-for-all”

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  1. kevjohnno says:
    Sunday, March 25, 2018 at 12:37 pm
    How many runs will Australia make in their 2nd innings?

    Does it matter?

    It has never mattered.

  2. p

    That is such an interesting issue (and a far more likely limiting mechanism than, say, totally dead oceans) in terms of P1’s abiding interest in feedback mechanisms which will bite humanity’s population numbers in the bum.

    ATM we squander phosphorous as if it were endless. There are all sorts of considerations. As it becomes scarce it will shift to higher value ag outputs. And lower-quality deposits will become economical.

    Smearing it across the Australian landscape for some wool and sheep meat production would be out, as would its use in phosphorous shells and the like.

    A lot of ag ph currently ends up in waterways, which tells you that it is wasted.

    It is as necessary for organic farming as it is for industrial farming. The limits are the same.

    It is far easier to be absolutely accurate with the dosage of ph in greenhouse ag. The motivation here is clear: you pay what you use, so you use just the right amount. When you have constant nutrient monitoring inside a greenhouse you are in the best position to manage these inputs.

    There are significant options for reducing the amount of ph per unit of production by GMO plants and there is work being done on this.

    Harvesting ph directly from all sorts of faeces might eventually bridge the looming ph gap but…

    Other options include breeding fish, birds and animals that act as ph agregators and then harvesting them for their ph.

  3. Grimace – actually, the outrage at this sort of conduct suggests something quite good about our society (and nothing good about where sport has gone: professionalism; commercialism; a billboard for every slimy product in our society – except cigarettes)

  4. If Cricket Australia (CA) was serious they would start by having Shane Warne’s records erased from the record books. He is a known drug cheat and CA halved the MINIMUM term for his conviction. Now that others teams are sledging them back, they are showing their true colours – that of cowardly, load mouthed bullies.

    Added to that is some of the worst home team decisions by some appalling umpires – Darrell Hair anyone?

    They are a national shame and have been for several years.
    Tom.

  5. Fancy throwing one of your own team under a bus hoping that he would get away with it and so not tarnish the rest of the players records.Low life scum if you ask me.

  6. There’s enough facts already to take decisive action as Cricket Australia’s CEO.

    1. Forfeit the rest of this match on the basis of admitted cheating.
    2. Stand down the Coach, Captain, Vice Captain and Bancroft pending further investigation.
    3. Have a number of players on standby to send to SA for the remaining test.

    4. Sutherland could have offered an apology to the SA team and public rather than just focus on the shock of Australian cricket fans.

  7. Boerwar @ #1177 Sunday, March 25th, 2018 – 1:15 pm

    In this area it produces 15% of Australia’s vine potatoes using desalinated water and solar energy as inputs. There is no soil. All biodiv is excluded from the growing spaces.

    I presume you mean tomatoes, not potatoes.

    Yes, hydro tomatoes are great. They don’t take much land and don’t have much environmental impact … except for the minor details that you must supply all the nutrients from somewhere else, and you increase the salinity of either the nearby land or the nearby ocean. But hey – someone else’s problem, right? Oh, and of course tomatoes are 97% water and have very little nutritional value. They would hardly be first choice for feeding the starving multitudes. Oh, and hydro fruit & veg also tends to be deficient in minerals – but I suppose you can just add those to the artificial nutrient solution you have to use. Also, it’s a bit of a shame about the lack of flavor, but you can’t have everything, right?

    But other than these very minor quibbles – way to go! 🙂

  8. offered an apology to the SA team and public

    Cornt see that happening. Cornt recall SA cricket apologising for much.

  9. Boerwar @ #1203 Sunday, March 25th, 2018 – 1:34 pm

    That is such an interesting issue (and a far more likely limiting mechanism than, say, totally dead oceans) in terms of P1’s abiding interest in feedback mechanisms which will bite humanity’s population numbers in the bum.

    Phosphorus shortage? Not a problem we are likely to last long enough to have to worry about 🙁

    Edit: phosphorus, not phosphate!

  10. Never buy a fish or a Turnbull with sunken eyeballs. And always demand to see the arse first.

    I’ve always been amazed that anyone could look at Trumble and not see the arse first.

  11. Booleanbach

    I am with Aldi mobile.

    I referenced Aldi at https://willmyphonework.net/ and the answer is “yes”. Since Aldi uses the Telstra network, Telstra will also work, and probably most other telcos.

    On another blog I visited numerous writers using various telcos stated that their Fairphone 2 does in fact work in Australia.

  12. I can’t remember precisely when, but early 2000’s during an important game (ashes or world cup) Adam Gilchrist, quite admirably, walked after being given not out when he knew he was.

    He was heavily criticised at the time by various people including those in the media for doing so.
    I thought he had upheld the spirit of the game.

    Cricket, which had been an utter obsession of mine since childhood, lost whatever remnant charm it had after that incident and I haven’t watched it since.

    Attitudes of some of those associated with the sport have clearly not improved.

  13. I think there may be more behind this cricket episode – not excusing it though.

    Smith was obviously annoyed and upset that Rabada was cleared without Smith being asked to present his side of the story. Rabada probably should also have been charged for a send-off he gave Warner after bumping Smith. I don’t recall seeing that he was charged.

    This may be why CA is not rushing to judgement. The whole series has not been played in the spirit of the game – from both sides.

  14. What a lot of posts here are saying is that we hold our sports people to higher standards than we expect of politicians and business. Or at least cricketers. Most NRL players cheat when they think the referee is looking elsewhere. I assume it’s the same for AFL.

    Then there’s performance enhancing drugs. I think it’s like serving in tennis. The server aims to get the ball right on the line, a fraction of a millimetre in, not comfortably inside. Elite sportspeople take drugs to the limit, some cross over.

  15. David Marr shows balance; call out Liberal and Labor bullshit.

    Cash for Dividend imputation credits is grossly unfair.

    If you use the credits to reduce your tax then the company pays the tax.
    If you get cashback for the credits then no one pays the tax; not the company because you got the tax they paid in your hot little hand; not you because you pay no tax.

    It was unfair when it was introduced; it is unfair now and trying to justify it’s retention is obscene and does no credit to anyone trying to carry that can of bullshit.

    As for Shorten reintroducing distortions to the education funding model to favor the Catholic system David Marr is right; Labor should have taken the Liberal party tidy up and shut up. Destroying the perhaps only good things this government has done shows as much sanity as the Liberals destroying all the good thing the Gillard Government did.

    As for the Andrews Government spending $1,000,000 to try and stop the Victoria’s Ombudsman Deborah Glass; as least they went for a legal challenge instead of smear as was done by the federal liberals and Professor Gillian Triggs; or the state liberals as Kennet did with Ches Baragwanath.

  16. ANTONBRUCKNER11 says:
    Sunday, March 25, 2018 at 1:35 pm

    Cricket, along with many other sports, has been turned into a commodity. This occurred to cricket a very long time ago, following which a game was turned into a product that was pumped out and marketed to saturation point, like every other commodity. I have a fairly low threshold for boredom and lost interest in cricket at about same time Packer started producing the one-day version. Too much cricket was definitely more than I could absorb. Consequently I haven’t taken much interest in this form of amusement for about 40 years. I doubt I’ve missed much.

    The primary value of commodified production is always monetary. Everything tends to be subsumed by this.

    Of course, members of this “team” – and specially the misnamed “leadership group” – have just incinerated their social licence. The single best thing they can do for themselves and the market in which they contend is to quit. They should do it immediately. Doubtless, they won’t. They mistakenly think they count. They don’t. They are entirely expendable and always have been. They will soon find that shams are really unacceptable to those who consume their products.

  17. Developing News:

    This afternoon CA CEO James Sutherland announced that effective immediately Jarryd Hayne has been appointed captain coach of the Australian Cricket Team.

    In a short statement issued before he boarded the daily qantas flight to Johannasberg the new captain was quoted as saying “It’s my boyhood dream come true”.

  18. Unfortunately, there’s so much money involved in sport – all sport – these days that it makes people do stupid things.

    I agree it was bloody stupid and I am really depressed about what this has done to the rep of a sport I love.

    But some people are getting angry because Smith admitted to it, unlike those in the past.

    Watching the break just now in the NZ v Eng match, Doull (a former NZ player) was listing the litany of ball tampering that he knows of. Eng & SA have both used zippered pockets on their outfits to scrape the ball. Others on the show admitted their job in the outfield was to suck the mints so he could coat the ball. Wicket-keepers gloves with Velcro attached to scrape whenever the keeper got the ball.

    So it isn’t the cheating that people are getting so wound up about (and yes I think that is very bad, and I am angry about it and the message it sends kids especially!!!!!) but the honest admission should not be what gets them bagged.

  19. Isn’t ball tampering beside the point. We should really be worried about cricket being used to sell booze and gambling

  20. ‘p1
    Yes, hydro tomatoes are great. They don’t take much land and don’t have much environmental impact … except for the minor details that you must supply all the nutrients from somewhere else, and you increase the salinity of either the nearby land or the nearby ocean. But hey – someone else’s problem, right? Oh, and of course tomatoes are 97% water and have very little nutritional value. They would hardly be first choice for feeding the starving multitudes. Oh, and hydro fruit & veg also tends to be deficient in minerals – but I suppose you can just add those to the artificial nutrient solution you have to use. Also, it’s a bit of a shame about the lack of flavor, but you can’t have everything, right?’

    Quite right. You cannot maximize all your variables. If you want to maximize production you have to minimize biodiversity. And vice versa.

    Quite by chance I was investigating the history of the Bronte sisters and the environmental living conditions of their home town in the mid-19th Century. More biodiversity than you could poke a stick at. Indeed human ordure flowed along the town streets when it rained.

    THEIR food (and indeed their water supplies) would have been extra tasty compared with our nasty hydroponic fruit.

  21. This afternoon CA CEO James Sutherland announced that effective immediately Jarryd Hayne has been appointed captain coach of the Australian Cricket Team.

    Matt Lodge might come in handy.

  22. frednk

    He might just as well have listed the hundeds of millions that Coalition governments have spent on trying to nail Rudd, Gillard and Shorten, the hundreds of thousands being spent by the Coalition to defend Cash and company and the systematic abuse of process to prevent taxpayers from knowing what is really happening in the concentration camps.

    But, no…

  23. As a person of Southern European descent, I strongly condemn Player1’s scurrilous, unwarranted, malicious and utterly wrong headed attack on the humble tomato, a mainstay of our diet, a source of seasonal employment, and a thoroughly nutritious, pleasant tasting fruit, and an excellent source of vitamin C and other essential vitamins.

    And I do so fully cognizant of the fact that I have just fired the first retaliatory shot in the Great Tomato Wars of 2018.

  24. Indeed Steve.

    All sports from racing to cricket to cycling to formula 1 … it makes for selfish participants doing whatever it takes to be on top.

    Holding cricket up as a ‘gentleman’s game’ is a falsehood … it is the same as any other entertainment commodity

  25. If you use the credits to reduce your tax then the company pays the tax.

    No the company does not. When franking credits are used by anyone there is effectively zero company tax paid on the income distributed as dividends.

  26. No one has been killed in the Spanish Tomato Wars as a result of direct contact with a tomato since 1927.

    A truly benign weapon, when used in accordance with the International Rules of Engagement, and with the Geneva Convention.

  27. Boerwar

    Quite right. You cannot maximize all your variables. If you want to maximize production you have to minimize biodiversity. And vice versa.

    We don’t need to maximise production at the expense of biodiversity. We already have a global food surplus. The problems are the inequitable distribution of food production, massive wastage, and the inefficient conversion of high-quality plant-based foods into meat production.
    If you reduce biodiversity you cut the planet’s throat. Ecosystems are complex as are all biological systems, and what may seem to be relatively minor interactions can have massive effects.

  28. FV
    As a person with some Irish ancestry, whilst I remain committed to the potato as a traditional source of carbohydrates, whether in fried, roasted or even stew form, I recognise the legitimacy of the tomato in Australian cuisine. Indeed, the coming together of the potato and the tomato, particularly in the form of tomato sauce on fried chips, demonstrates one of the many benefits of our multi-cultural society 🙂

  29. Boerwar @ #1229 Sunday, March 25th, 2018 – 2:26 pm

    Quite right. You cannot maximize all your variables. If you want to maximize production you have to minimize biodiversity. And vice versa.

    Yes indeed. You can maximize the number of people on the planet if you are willing to minimize their quality of life. But why you would want to do that is still beyond me 🙁

    Quite by chance I was investigating the history of the Bronte sisters and the environmental living conditions of their home town in the mid-19th Century. More biodiversity than you could poke a stick at. Indeed human ordure flowed along the town streets when it rained.

    I’m sure you have a point here, but I’m blowed if I can see what it is. If we all lived off hydro tomatoes we’d end up with better plumbing? Or less rain?

    THEIR food (and indeed their water supplies) would have been extra tasty compared with our nasty hydroponic fruit.

    I’ll bet it was. And I’ll also bet they wouldn’t ever have faced a phosphorous shortage either! 🙂

  30. Channel 9 run a self selecting online poll via EasyPoll, which should really be called EasyPushPoll. Here is their latest question…

    Easy Poll latest- Do you support Shortens new revenue tax grab that penalises over a million shareholders?

    And surprisingly the result is:

    No 89% Yes 11% #Skynews #abc #auspol #smh #9News


  31. Jackol (Block)
    Sunday, March 25th, 2018 – 2:38 pm
    Comment #1240

    If you use the credits to reduce your tax then the company pays the tax.

    No the company does not. When franking credits are used by anyone there is effectively zero company tax paid on the income distributed as dividends.

    Nonsense. The franking credit is for the tax the company has paid. If the company pays no tax you get no credit. If the company par 10% tax then you get a 10% credit. That is an Australian company can offer dividends that have no franking credits because they pay no tax. All the way up to the full company tax rate.
    That is the sting in the tail of the Liberal tax cuts for companies; there will be less franking credits on offer. The only people that will win out of that will be overseas share holders who get no franking credits.

  32. Boerwar
    PS
    I have no beef against growing hydroponic tomatoes. These tomatoes are truly dual-purpose. Useful, both on a sandwich and for general construction.

  33. Fulvio Sammut @ #1233 Sunday, March 25th, 2018 – 2:32 pm

    As a person of Southern European descent, I strongly condemn Player1’s scurrilous, unwarranted, malicious and utterly wrong headed attack on the humble tomato, a mainstay of our diet, a source of seasonal employment, and a thoroughly nutritious, pleasant tasting fruit, and an excellent source of vitamin C and other essential vitamins.

    You won’t be able to say any of these things once they are all of the same boring variety, grown hydroponically for size and shelf-life rather than nutritional value or flavor. Actually, I think we are there already 🙁

    And I do so fully cognizant of the fact that I have just fired the first retaliatory shot in the Great Tomato Wars of 2018.

    I’ll bet my home-grown tomatoes are tastier and more nutritious than any you have ever bought in a shop! 🙂

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