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.
Zoidlord says:
Sunday, March 25, 2018 at 3:21 pm
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
Neither did my dad. He lived just on the pension after he retired.
Very sad news. Philip Kerr has died aged 62. He wrote the magnificent Nazi Germany crime novels featuring Bernie Gunther.
RIP
Half way into Q4 and GWS is looking ominoussissimus.
63 points ahead of the Dogs.
Turnbull doing a Abbott on Victorian Fires.
And Turnbull is in total “disbelief” of Cricket cheating.
But he should all know about cheating….
Boerwar
Thanks for that. Not sorted, but a very interesting issue which has ramifications for everybody. I will likely post something about it in the future.
p1
‘ 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! ‘
Quite right. All three died very young from a surfeit of biodiversity. Modern medicines used to control biodiversity would have added another 2-30 years to their lives.
Diogenes says: Sunday, March 25, 2018 at 3:35 pm
Very sad news. Philip Kerr has died aged 62. He wrote the magnificent Nazi Germany crime novels featuring Bernie Gunther.
RIP
*******************************************
Thanks Diogenes for the recommendation – always good to find another talented writer to read
My Favourite German author was/is : Hans Hellmut Kirst – the author of 46 books, many of which were translated into English. Kirst is best remembered as the creator of the “Gunner Asch” series which detailed the ongoing struggle of an honest individual to maintain his identity and humanity amidst the criminality and corruption of Nazi Germany.
He was probably best known for Die Nacht der Generale, translated into English as The Night of the Generals. The book dealt with an investigation into a series of murders of prostitutes during and after World War II committed by one of three German generals. The book was made into a fairly successful 1967 film of the same name, which starred Omar Sharif and Peter O’Toole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Hellmut_Kirst
Lordy. It is a training romp. 74 points up.
Hopoate to probe CA?
I saw him leave a bar once; I reminded him to push his stool in
Boom Boom!
I think Steve Smith should be a member of the Liberal party.
Earlier someone spoke about the future hard times coming Australia’s was from the Barmy Army. Well wait no more the future has arrived.
✔
@TheBarmyArmy
Steve Smith is an Aussie
He wears a baggy cap
And when he saw some sticky tape
He said I’m having that…
He gave it Cameron Bancroft
Who rubbed it on the ball
Those cheating Aussie convicts
They’ll never change at all!
Credit: @SJL_81
12:35 PM – Mar 25, 2018
Did he tell you to bugger off or offer to do that for you?
Boerwar
You surprised at Giants? They will almost certainly be no worse than last year and the Bulldogs almost certainly will be.
p1
What astonishes me is that you persist in ignoring all the real world evidence: low biodiv farming is more productive than high biodiv farming. You do not address this. What you do is instead to point to second and third order issues as if the existence of problems and challenges somehow means that the core reality is not true. I could spend some time pointing out the problems with high biodiv farming as well. But these are, IMO, essentially side issues.
If you want the latter, as a policy concomitant, you are going to have to explain how you are going to delete most of the world’s population.
Personally, I would like to see the global population of humans to be around 20 million and for me and my family and friends to be part of the 20 million, naturally.
It is not the desirability of this state of affairs that is the issue, IMO.
The issue is how we get there. In the interim, I do not support deliberately starving people to death because they rely on the higher productivity of low biodiv farming systems.
And here is the nub. The number of people who go hungry at any one time is directly related to price of globally traded food commodities. That is to say, if we stop low biodiv farming now, today, and replace it with the optimum outputs from organic farming, people will commence starving by the hundreds of millions.
Playing at backyard farming does not cut it. It is the big numbers that count here.
It is 7am in South Africa.
Wonder if Smith got any sleep?
82 point pizzling. Dogs have tails between legs.
‘Rossmcg says:
Sunday, March 25, 2018 at 3:54 pm
Boerwar
You surprised at Giants? They will almost certainly be no worse than last year and the Bulldogs almost certainly will be.’
Surprised, no. Dismayed, yes.
Bringing the game into disrepute depends a bit on whether how disreputable the game was before they sandpapered their integrity.
Can we bring Gilly back, even if only as head coach?
https://www.foxsports.com.au/cricket/australian-sports-commission-calls-for-steve-smith-and-others-to-stand-down-over-ball-tampering-saga/news-story/200d28dc6df519f79adcd09df3e4d1fd
SandpaperGate
Boerwar says:
Sunday, March 25, 2018 at 3:59 pm
Bringing the game into disrepute depends a bit on whether how disreputable the game was before they sandpapered their integrity.
————————————–
Much the same for bringing your country into disrepute I suppose.
Fulvio Sammut says:
Sunday, March 25, 2018 at 2:57 pm
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.
This is an example of EU agricultural subsidies supporting consumers in non-EU markets. EU taxpayers are supplementing real household incomes in WA.
I can remember looking at the commercial feasibility of producing tomato sauces, soups and similar products in WA. It is almost completely impossible to make a profit from these even if the tomatoes were supplied for nothing.
Further examples exist. It is possible to buy bulk processed Spanish onions – that is, grown, transported, prepared, fried, packed, frozen, shipped, imported and delivered – in Perth for less than price of whole onions, ex-farm. Considering the weight losses and freight costs involved, and the very low price of fresh onions, there is a very large subsidy involved in this product.
**Can we bring Gilly back, even if only as head coach?**
Next you will be asking for the return of Shane Watson
😉
As far as Lehmann goes, Smith says he was not involved.
Lehmann did sent a message through Handscomb to Bancroft but we have no idea what it said. If Lehmann was on the outside he may have simply seen one of his players do something which looked bad and wanted to know what was happening. Bancroft could have then acted on his own initiative to hide the evidence. Lehmann might be furious about this and he might have forced Smith and Bancroft to confess.
Or Smith was lying and Lehmann knew about it and was trying to cover it up, but there is no evidence of this second version.
It needs to be investigated.
The statement from the Aust Sports Commission doesn’t pull any punches (thanks steve davis)
Good on the Aus Sports Commission.
SK:
I admit to being an ‘anyone but Boof’ person when it comes to the coach.
Scott
We can speculate till the cows come home but like most of these things I doubt we will ever know who knew what and when.
Smith and Bancroft have owned up and implicated other members of the team.
Even if Lehmann didn’t know can he survive? Reminds me of the old rule that used to apply in politics: Ministers were held responsible for the failings of underlings even if they didn’t know.
I think John Howard trashed that principle.
I believe Lehman’s contract expires at the end of 2019 and he has been reported as saying he won’t seek a renewal. He may survive this in the short term If Smith stays loyal but I would reckon he will be gone before next summer, leaving early to “spend more time with the family”.
CA will apologise, say we do not condone the actions of a few, we apologize to the Aus public, and then hand out free bucket hats for the kids. Nothing will chamge.
** I believe Lehman’s contract expires at the end of 2019 and he has been reported as saying he won’t seek a renewal. He may survive this in the short term If Smith stays loyal but I would reckon he will be gone before next summer, leaving early to “spend more time with the family”. **
Holy scheming Sandgropers batman! Bancroft has done this to get Lehmann sacked so that his WA mate Langer gets the job!
Boerwar says:
Sunday, March 25, 2018 at 3:34 pm
We should see developments in agriculture as engineering by other names. We can increase the engineering intensity and make production more efficient, where to be efficient is “to do more with fewer inputs”. As well, the less land that is required for agriculture, the more land will be available for conservation. By specialising the use of land, it is obviously possible to have both more agricultural production as well as greater natural conservation. In fact, we should see gains in conservation as an external benefit arising from more highly engineered agriculture.
Rossmcg
Trashing principles was a Howard speciality.
#Ballgate
Lol
Possum Comitatus
@Pollytics
·
31m
Sometimes I wish Russia played cricket, just to see what professional level, state supported cheating would do in cricket.
Special elixirs made for each side of the ball, seam height expander sunscreen, bats with super abrasive surfaces laced with leather killer
SK
That’s a great theory but there must be someone from NSW available.
Russian cricket?
novichok: a little dab will do ya.
Zoidlord
Re “Sometimes I wish Russia played cricket,” . Ah but they do. 🙂
.
“Cricket Russia Twenty20 Tournament Final
Moskvich Cricket Club v New Power Cricket Club
Karacharovo Oval, Moscow
Saturday, September 12th, 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRNvIDuSJ0Y
Steve Smith went to the doctors.He said “Ive got a cricket ball stuck up my arse.”The doctor said “Howzat”.Smith said “Dont you f……g start.!!”
Has anyone done the team song joke?
“Under the Southern Cross we sand?”
** CA will apologise… and then hand out free bucket hats for the kids. **
Those hats baffle me. W T F ?
I heard the leadership group is Smith, Warner, Lyon, Starc and Haselgrove.
That’s a lot of people to send home.
When was the last time you heard a politician give a speech like this one on the removal of confederate statues?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csMbjG0-6Ak
I wouldn’t want to be an Aussie cricketer fielding on the boundary today. You’d get covered in sandpaper.
Confessions says:
About a million years before or after anyone in Australia gave a shit about it.
Dio:
Yep, a tough couple of days coming up for Australia.
Wheat, meat, automobiles, phones. What’s the difference? Their production all follow the same universal process.
poroti:
I was thinking you’d have to go back to the Redfern Speech by Keating. I can’t remember anyone speaking in such a way about uniting minority groups with the wider community since.
Diogenes says: Sunday, March 25, 2018 at 5:03 pm
I heard the leadership group is Smith, Warner, Lyon, Starc and Haselgrove.
That’s a lot of people to send home.
*******************************
If the Australian Cricket Board had ANY integrity – the Boss should get on national TV and on screen rip their contracts into 1000 pieces and say ” You will NEVER EVER play cricket for Australia again”
Steve Smith: “It’s not what I want to see in the game of Cricket.”
Um, he’s the one who brought it into the game of cricket.