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.
@sprocket_
Maybe Shorten is on a winner based on that LOL
Well at least overseas shareholders got no franking credits when I did my Diploma of finance which I did so I understood all this stuff.
Tomatoes lost their flavor decades ago. If you want the flavor back don’t grow them in North Queensland.
frednk –
Yes, of course it is. The point is that the tax is refunded as if it had never been paid at all because the income is then reassessed as personal income of the Australian resident recipient.
In effect no company tax is paid on this income – personal income tax is paid instead at the recipient’s marginal rate.
If you increased or decreased the company tax rate it would make no difference to revenue collected by the government on dividend income to Australian residents because the company tax rate is not applied due to the refunding of franking credits as part of dividend imputation.
Socrates, whilst I in awe of the nutritional and social benefits of the potato, not least when distilled, and its ability to fit easily in the mix of other fruit and vegetables, I must point out that used as a missile it is far deadlier and more dangerous than the tomato.
In Ireland alone, 53 people have died as a result of assault by potato since 1927.
jenauthor, when a soccer player goes through another player with a studs up challenge there is a huge outcry from fans. Doing it multiple times does ruin a players reputation, Kevin Muscat is an example of that, he is known for his extremely bad tackles. However these are not premeditated actions, they happen in the moment.
A better comparison of the cheating that the Smith and co undertook overnight is taking drugs, something that requires planning. Some ball tampering might also happen in the moment, but this is a different level. What Smith has admitted to doing is planning to cheat and then pressuring the most inexperienced member of the team to do the dirty work. This is disgusting, it shows complete unsuitability to be a leader, none of those involved should ever hold leadership positions again, except perhaps for Bancroft.
frednk @ #1252 Sunday, March 25th, 2018 – 2:49 pm
We grow heritage varieties. Lots of flavor, and interesting shapes and colours as well!
Amazing what even just a little biodiversity will do!
poroti @ #1351 Sunday, March 25th, 2018 – 1:41 pm
The date fiddler, dirty dick natale, is the man you want if there’s a purge to be had.
Player One @ #1364 Sunday, March 25th, 2018 – 1:53 pm
Yep, it eats all the tomatoes
Of course the great tomato and potato combination is a Bloody Mary cocktail. Probably killed more than thrown potatoes and tomatoes combined.
Actually, I get most of my tomatoes in a bottle marked “Passata” or a can marked “Cirio”, imported by local merchants from Italy, fully flavoursome, and at a third of the price of the same product made in Australia.
I totally agree with this.
And seeing as Smith admitted to it I can’t believe Sutherland hadn’t spoken to Smith overnight. CA would’ve been alerted to this incident the minute it hit the media if not before.
Vogon Poet @ #1258 Sunday, March 25th, 2018 – 2:55 pm
Not if you do “companion planting” – http://www.sgaonline.org.au/companion-planting/
Of course, you could also use pesticides – but we don’t need to.
Fulvio Sammut @ #1260 Sunday, March 25th, 2018 – 2:57 pm
You may want to read this – https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign-affairs/mafia-uses-slave-labour-for-tinned-tomatoes-dumped-in-australia/news-story/b79f9796a3b4dbded54b7469a3d865d4 🙁
Re Smith and the cricketers.
Time to rip any government money off elite sport and spread it around to more community-based sporting and exercise initiatives.
If they can’t play cricket with a code of ethics, the boring arrogant little pricks should just fuck off.
Need more focus on science and the arts heroes instead of these jumped-up bastards whose only skill is to either chuck or intercept a high speed missile, or hit their opponent in the balls.
Jackol
I see where you coming from; however; the amount of franking credits is in the formula ( which to be honest I would now have to look up) and the amount of franking credits depends on the company tax paid which can, as we well know be zero; so you can have dividends with no credits.
It is beyond a nonsense to say the franking credits available do not depend on the company tax rate; it is deliberate miss information.
Passatta is a great product and cheap as well.
‘Trog Sorrenson says:
Sunday, March 25, 2018 at 2:41 pm
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.’
I agree with most of your points. There are some interesting highways and byways. Currently around 50 billion chooks are bred per annum. Most of these are fed artificial food in almost totally artificial growing situations. If we used the same protein inputs and must the same capital inputs we could double the protein outputs by switching from chooks to fish because fish are much better than chooks at conversion. In simple terms we would gain an extra 50 billion chook’s worth of protein but in fish form.
The only point where we seriously disagree is in relation to outmoded notions that agricultural productivity depends on lots biodiversity. Theoretically, the biodiversity promoters argue this case on first principles.
The actual evidence is that, in general, the less biodiv, the higher the productivity; the higher the biodiv, the lower the productivity.
An interesting consideration is that marine and terrestrial systems which have the highest levels of biodiversity: rainforests and coral reefs have naturally low productivity. There are no vast herds of natural herbivores. Human population densities are naturally low.
Newspoll tonight? #29 for Mal. Tick tock. My guess is a slight return to LNP (back to 52:48 TPP) after the low of the deb-arnaby-arcle. I predict the Oz and other loony fringe media will declare this is a comeback and a ‘damning’ of labor’s class war tax cuts and support for the LNPs corporate tax cuts. A ‘good’ week for the LNP now basically means getting through it without blasting one or both feet off
I expect the media to go into hyperdrive over the impending #30 Newspoll over the next fortnight and I think dutton and the right will make a move soon after. is there any issue that would justify a ‘principled’ move to the backbench? if dutton can’t get the numbers then I think that’s where he’ll go to destablise Turnbull further before making a challenge. Turnbull has conceded so much turn to the RWNJs in his party that it is hard to see what excuse Dutton would use to make this move to the backbench.
The Great PB Tomato Wars doesn’t look anything like this! Way too tame!
Player One (Block)
Sunday, March 25th, 2018 – 2:53 pm
Comment #1256
frednk @ #1252 Sunday, March 25th, 2018 – 2:49 pm
Tomatoes lost their flavor decades ago. If you want the flavor back don’t grow them in North Queensland.
We grow heritage varieties. Lots of flavor, and interesting shapes and colours as well!
Amazing what even just a little biodiversity will do!
Stop it; my mouth is watering just thinking about it.
I still buy SPC Canned Tomatoes in order to support an Australian company just trying to survive. 🙂
Trog Sorrenson @ #1264 Sunday, March 25th, 2018 – 3:04 pm
Local cricket provides recreation for many people. Society needs it.
The Govt though needs to lay down the law re the conduct and example of senior level administration and onfield personnel.
GWS looking ominouser by the quarter.
Fish farms are terribly things, they destroy the environment. We really should be eating sardines and the smaller fish rather than mass breeding and farming larger species.
Should be Newspoll tonight, shouldn’t it?
And I believe Australian producers import casual fruit pickers in the form of back packers and working holiday visa holders, provide them with below award wages and no penalty rates, work them for long hours, provide substandard accomodation for them at exorbitant rentals, threaten them with deportation and retention of wages if they complain, tax them even though their income is below the tax threshhold in most cases, often retain their passports, and generally treat them like indentured labourers.
So why the price differential between Australian and Italian grown tomatoes?
Re tomato flavour – it’s amazing how much flavour is to be had in just about any tomato if you let them warm to room temperature. I reckon the so-called ‘loss of flavour’ is mainly due to over refrigeration in the past 30 years.
P1
Completely agree about heritage tomatoes. Excellent flavour and a much better flesh to seed ratio. They might look a bit weird but they are the best for eating by a mile.
Andrew_Earlwood @ #1277 Sunday, March 25th, 2018 – 12:12 pm
I never store tomatoes in the fridge. Way to ruin their flavour.
Dont Coca Cola own it? Is there some arrangement where all control and profit/loss stays in Australia?
Boerwar
Depends how you define productivity. Monocultures are inherently less stable. Not much help if you have high productivity one day, then wake up the next and your crop has been wiped out.
Does this ‘productivity’ factor in transport costs, refrigeration, and environmental impacts?
We also need to get right away from centralised food production to locally grown. Saves a huge amount of energy, has higher nutritional value as less time to degrade, and with more diverse genetic types a greater nutritional range.
It takes very little space to grow food, whether hydroponics, aquaponics or simply a few square metres in the backyard or community garden.
frednk –
I never said that.
You said this:
And this is simply wrong because of the fact that after the process of dividend imputation any company tax has been fully refunded. No company tax gets paid on income distributed as dividends to Australian residents because it is fully refunded through franking credits. That is true for all Australian resident taxpayers whether they are above the tax free threshold or not at the moment.
Hence what I said:
And I maintain that this is absolutely true. Yes there is tax that is paid and then unpaid along the way, but the net position of the government on this income amounts to having a company tax rate of zero, and thus talking about the company paying tax is misleading.
Yes, if a company pays no tax they have no franking credits, and their dividends are unfranked or partially franked. And? The whole notion of franking credits is to tally up the amount of company tax paid so that it can all be refunded (when going to Australian residents via dividends), undoing the payment of that company tax entirely. In full. Absolutely. To zero.
OH is cooking part of our year’s supply of tomato relish as we post.
Ox hearts. Big. Plump. Dark red. Oozing with a classic come hither flavour.
Beautiful scents wafting about the house…
Home grown in totally organic conditions, of course.
None of that cheap hydroponic or industrial tomato muck for us!
The big improvement in productivity this year was gained quite simply: by preventing any of the leaves from touching the ground. Just that small air barrier reduced the amount of soil-based biodiversity ravaging productivity from reaching the plant.
Just a minor note on the canned and glassed supermarket tomato and passata, I suggest that you check the sugar levels. Some of the latter are very norty indeed.
Andrew
Maybe because of an increase in the amount of cellulose. Designed to reduce bruising from freight and handling.
I didn’t watch it but this was reported
“With Bancroft having been caught on television roughing the ball with tape, Darren Lehmann is depicted relaying a message to 12th man Peter Handscomb, who then enters the field to deliver a message to Bancroft. Subsequently, Bancroft is shown hiding the tape down his pants, before lying to on-field umpires that he was using only cloth.”
So Lehman got Bancroft to hide the tape when the TV cameras caught him? Or did Lehman not know about it?
Boerwar @ #1267 Sunday, March 25th, 2018 – 3:05 pm
Human population densities should naturally be low because we have the heaviest ecological footprint of any species on the planet. So why are there so bloody many of us?
The answer is that we have artificially – and temporarily – ramped productivity up to unsustainable levels, and are now getting close to hitting hard limits. We have done this not because we need more people, but because there are profits to be made from it for a wealthy minority. We are also poisoning the planet in the process, and causing global extinctions at an unprecedented rate. Why, just today you pointed out that we may run out of phosphorous in just a few decades. And we have already seen instances of populations running out of fresh water. Also various rare-earths are becoming problematic.
It astonishes me that you cannot seem to make the obvious connections between these things.
Diogenes
Several lifetimes ago I worked at an agricultural research station, spuds and tomatoes. At the time the aim was ‘productivity’ of plants but before I left the aim became being tough enough to survive transport. Hey who needs flavour when your tomato can be stored for months and be transported for many a mile.
Personally I blame “us” the dumb customers. Fruit and vege became all about looking “perfect”. So of course the suppliers responded.
Simon Katich @ #1279 Sunday, March 25th, 2018 – 3:14 pm
Isn’t Coca Cola Amatil an Australian company?
Anyway, if they keep the factory open and employ Aussies, I’ll support them.
Most retirees paid no taxes for 30 years:
http://www.afr.com/news/policy/tax/manifestly-unsustainable-most-retirees-pay-no-tax-for-30-years-20180322-h0xt2w
Yes we definitely need to know more about what Lehman knew about the plan and when.
#weatheronPB: Summer continues here, 32-33° across Sydney.
Fulvio Sammut @ #1276 Sunday, March 25th, 2018 – 3:11 pm
Despite the best efforts of this government, we are clearly sub-standard at bastardry. We should strive to be world-class!
Fulvio Sammut says:
Sunday, March 25, 2018 at 2:41 pm
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
What a lot of tossers.
They should freeze the tomatoes first, then fire them from a trebuchet.
Boerwar @ #1283 Sunday, March 25th, 2018 – 3:18 pm
Boerwar: “Do what I say, not what I do” 🙂
poroti
“Personally I blame “us” the dumb customers. Fruit and vege became all about looking “perfect”. So of course the suppliers responded.”
Style over substance is definitely the way the world has gone.
Socrates says:
Sunday, March 25, 2018 at 2:41 pm
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
Peasant! What are ya, a Canuck, eh?
😉
I also expect a 52-48 Newspoll. South Australian election may give a little boost in that state to the Libs and in Victoria news cycle was negative for Labor with state politics. Plus, we should be coming off the Barnaby effect.
This will of course be followed up by Turnbull getting his mojo back and The Australian claiming voters give the tick for company tax cuts.
Jackol
Just went and refreshed my memory. I see where your coming from but my point stands; but I can now see how we ended up in this mess. People believed franking credits were income because of how they are applied. They are not; they are tax credits; to be able to convert them to cash would be as silly as being able to convert tax losses (happens when you expand a company rapidly) to cash.
Trog
Sure, there are ups and downs. But, in genereal, high biodiv organic systems produce about 80% as much food as low biodiv high intensity systems. The former systems currently feed around a billion and a half people that the latter systems cannot currently feed.
Monocultures being ‘inherently less stable’ is old biodiversity thinking applied to modern farming systems. There are various ways of testing the proposition. One is simply to look at the capital investment and ROI of the different systems. If organic systems were superior in terms of predictability of production, the old style of locally grown peasantry would be extremely popular. In fact, the very first thing that peasants do when they can, is to stop being peasants. It is a crap occupation and historically has been marked with nasty, brutish and short lives. Famines were common in high biodiv organic peasant farming areas.
The high biodiv Irish potato famine would have been prevented with a couple of common, cheap sprays. I could probably do a back of the envelop calc to sort it out, but you would be looking at perhaps ten million dollars worth of sprays to stop a million people from starving to death.
In terms of the food/space interface the increasing trend with low biodiv farming is to markedly reduce the space required to grow the same amount of food.
Broadacre potato growing can now grow five times the crop on the same space that it used to take.
Greenhouse productivity is incredibly more productive still.
I predict that vertical farming involving 24/7 growing of algae in vats is probably where low/zero biodiv food growing is going to end up. Not much space. Highly productive. Minimize transport and energy costs, etc.
BTW, I trust that your health problems have been sorted, and, if not best wishes from here on in.
In terms of our backyard garden, it is a very expensive indulgence. The rates per sq m alone could be converted into more food at Aldi’s. The water, ditto. The hours per kg, ditto.