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”

Comments Page 3 of 31
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  1. Bolton has repeatedly called for launching a first strike on North Korea, scuttling the nuclear arms deal with Iran, and then bombing that country too. He says and writes these things not as part of some clever “madman theory” to bring Kim Jong-un and the mullahs of Tehran to the bargaining table, but rather because he simply wants to destroy them and America’s other enemies too.

    His agenda is not “peace through strength,” the motto of more conventional Republican hawks that Trump included in a tweet on Wednesday, but rather regime change through war. He is a neocon without the moral fervor of some who wear that label—i.e., he is keen to topple oppressive regimes not in order to spread democracy but rather to expand American power.

    https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/john-bolton-named-national-security-advisor-its-time-to-panic-now.html

  2. Oh dear they are getting desperate
    Political Alert – @political_alert: Minister for the Environment and Energy @JoshFrydenberg will hold a doorstop about the Liddell Power Station at 12:15pm, Melbourne #auspol

  3. guytaur @ #100 Friday, March 23rd, 2018 – 9:26 am

    Kyle Griffin – @kylegriffin1: “The Daily Beast has learned that the special counsel in that investigation, Robert Mueller, has taken over the probe into Guccifer and brought the FBI agents who worked to track the persona onto his team.”

    Does this mean he can continue working at the FBI even if Trump fires him as Special Prosecutor?

  4. Player One @ #47 Friday, March 23rd, 2018 – 5:06 am

    Off-topic: Has anyone else had problems with this site simply disappearing periodically over the last few days? I’ve had about 3 instances of a “web site unavailable” error when every other web site seems fine. Comes back after about half an hour or so.

    Am I the only one seeing this?

    No problem here!

    Targeted?

    Maybe that explains ddt and pegs absences!!! 🙂

  5. AJM

    No it means that Mueller has made this part of his investigation. Just confirmation of what we thought would be investigated.

    Shows firing Mueller won’t stop the facts coming out.

  6. Barney in Go Dau @ #106 Friday, March 23rd, 2018 – 10:35 am

    Targeted?

    Maybe that explains ddt and pegs absences!!! 🙂

    Gawd, my views may be a bit too far to the left for most people here, but I would hope I was not considered quite as loopy as that! 🙂

    More likely just Mal the Magnificent’s massively overloaded NBN satellite 🙁

  7. Confessions says: Friday, March 23, 2018 at 10:31 am

    Jake TapperVerified account@jaketapper
    17m17 minutes ago
    Daily Beast: ‘Lone DNC Hacker’ Guccifer 2.0 Slipped Up and Revealed He Was a Russian Intelligence Officer http://thebea.st/2G4pTbO?source=twitter&via=mobile … via @thedailybeast

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

    First CambridgeAnalytica – now a Trump adviser, Roger Stone, with a direct Russian Intelligence officer link to hacked DNC documents ……. the missing bits of the jigsaw are coming together in droves this week ….

  8. phoenixRED @ #110 Friday, March 23rd, 2018 – 6:48 am

    Confessions says: Friday, March 23, 2018 at 10:31 am

    Jake TapperVerified account@jaketapper
    17m17 minutes ago
    Daily Beast: ‘Lone DNC Hacker’ Guccifer 2.0 Slipped Up and Revealed He Was a Russian Intelligence Officer http://thebea.st/2G4pTbO?source=twitter&via=mobile … via @thedailybeast

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

    First CambridgeAnalytica – now a Trump adviser, Roger Stone, with a direct Russian Intelligence officer link to hacked DNC ……. the missing bits of the jigsaw are coming together in droves this week ….

    Have you ever thought there may be more than one jigsaw here? 🙂

  9. BK @ #94 Friday, March 23rd, 2018 – 10:19 am

    The ASX is down 98 points and still falling. Thanks Trump!

    Yep. Was under the 200 MA around 5940 and still struggling at that level.

    A daily close under the 200 MA may well bring in more selling.

    3 or 4 lower highs are also now in place since the January high. Not good.

    But the US is hugely oversold – things there go from one extreme to another so quickly.

  10. Open complaints about ABC come more often now. Also I have noticed that in Mal’s PR stunts with businesses, he cuts across the CEOs when he doesn’t think they’re hitting the right note, and finishes their speeches for them. Very tactful, I don’t think.

    KHTAGH‏ @khtagh · 2h2 hours ago

    Bloody hell ABC stop this, you just had pyne spinning like a top on company tax cuts, & when it’s Albo’s reply you bloody cut him off!!! I have had a gut full of your perverting the interviews for the LNP aggrandizement & nobbling the ALP

  11. Peter Garrett‏Verified account @pgarrett · 39m39 minutes ago

    Big week for planet hating Turnbull Liberals. Demolishing marine parks with biggest ever cut to protection. Pushing coal #StopAdani mine taking 270 billion litres of groundwater. Tax cuts for rich.Dutton’s appalling “you are dead to me” the final straw. I grieve for our country.

  12. guytaur

    When it comes to what Snowden is or isn’t I think I’ll listen to Daniel Ellsberg. Unless of course Ellsberg is part of the vast conspiracy as well 😉

  13. Barney in Go Dau says:

    Friday, March 23, 2018 at 10:50 am

    phoenixRED @ #110 Friday, March 23rd, 2018 – 6:48 am

    Have you ever thought there may be more than one jigsaw here?

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

    It is possible that there are many jigsaws – and many many connections*

    …… but ultimately I think all the connections* lead back to one person …… as the Washington Post keeps a track of :

    * Connections

    Washington Post running graphic of the network :

    Here’s what we know so far about Team Trump’s ties to Russian interests

    Congress and U.S. intelligence agencies are scrutinizing connections between Russia and the Trump campaign as they investigate evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Here are members of Team Trump who are known to have Russian connections and the story lines that have made those ties relevant. This graphic will be updated with new developments.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/trump-russia/?hpid=hp_no-name_graphic-story-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.99b8919dc12d

  14. Poroti

    I think that Snowden was betrayed by Wikileaks and stranded in Moscow.

    I can’t believe that Snowden has not been left alone by the FSB.

    So I see him useful to the FSB for credibility purposes.

    So as long as you take that into account when you read his tweets its ok.

    That tweet I posted was consistent with why he left the NSA.

    The Irony is arguing for less state surveillance when tweeting from Moscow.

  15. Emma Alberici

    Verified account

    @albericie
    24h24 hours ago

    How are businesses that don’t pay corporate tax able to commit to hiring more people and lifting wages if the corporate tax rate goes down?

    Emma gets it.

  16. The NYT Washington correspondent:

    Glenn Thrush

    Verified account

    @GlennThrush
    19m19 minutes ago

    Today:
    1) Dow plummets 700 points on fears of Trump-initiated trade war
    2) Trump sacks second NatSec adviser
    3) Trump’s top lawyer quits defense team
    4) Rumors flying that he’s thinking of turning COS into a job-share
    5) Congress passes a $1.3 trillion budget w/o his input
    That it?

  17. Is Malcolm getting a bit desperate?

    Alice Workman‏Verified account @workmanalice · 1m1 minute ago

    Damn Malcolm. Back at it again. Interviewing people at a press conference. This time – farmers at the Sydney Royal Easter Show!

    And how will the company tax cut help your business? Also how good is trade!

  18. He Likes War’: Chris Matthews Unloads On Trump For Picking ‘Awful’ John Bolton As NSA

    They are bringing the biggest neo-con in the world. The one who so many millions of voters voted against in 2016, who voted against stupid wars, and bring in the biggest hawk there’s ever been and put him as head of national security is awful and I don’t know anybody who disagrees with that who thinks. … He likes war. He wanted war with Iraq. He pushed and pushed and pushed. He wanted to go to war with Syria. Name a country in the Middle East he didn’t want to go to war with. And he wants war now with Iran. … So that he can do what he wants to do, which is bomb. … He has said, “I want to bomb.”

    https://www.politicususa.com/2018/03/22/matthews-destroys-bolton.html

  19. lizzie @ #126 Friday, March 23rd, 2018 – 11:18 am

    Is Malcolm getting a bit desperate?

    Alice Workman‏Verified account @workmanalice · 1m1 minute ago

    Damn Malcolm. Back at it again. Interviewing people at a press conference. This time – farmers at the Sydney Royal Easter Show!

    And how will the company tax cut help your business? Also how good is trade!

    I don’t know about interviewing. Trying to direct the conversation traffic, more like.

  20. ‘That’s it — we’re all gonna die’: Internet freaks out after Trump picks ‘warmonger’ Bolton to replace McMaster

    https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/thats-gonna-die-internet-freaks-trump-picks-warmonger-bolton-replace-mcmaster/

    ‘There are no adults left in the room’: CNN security expert rips ‘insanity’ of Trump dumping McMaster for Bolton

    https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/no-adults-left-room-cnn-security-expert-rips-insanity-trump-dumping-mcmaster-bolton/

  21. The problem with Michael Padstow’s article critiquing Labor’s announcement of the tax changes last week (was it only that long ago?)
    Is that he has been reading accounts by fellow Fairfax journalists:
    So when Bill Shorten makes a major announcement out of a somewhat confused change in the treatment of dividend imputation, fails to adequately communicate what it’s about so it’s tainted with a whiff of class warfare, and then sort-of backtracks a bit while his Batman candidate panics and says “maybe” – oh dear.

    https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/dutton-and-dividends-dud-political-efforts-all-round-20180321-p4z5gx.html

  22. p1 re site going missing. Yes, it happened last night at about 9.30. I went elsewhere, then to bed, but it was missing for at least 30 mins.

  23. guytaur says:
    Friday, March 23, 2018 at 8:19 am
    Insiders ABC – @InsidersABC: As the Government edges closer to a deal on the company tax cuts, Derryn Hinch says he won’t reveal his position until next week, @murpharoo #Insiders #InsidersReading #auspol https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/mar/22/corporate-tax-cuts-a-step-closer-after-gaining-one-nation-support

    I could be wrong, but I have a theory about Hinch’s possible intentions. Having lost a lot of skin and public respect over his recent admission that he is back on the grog, (after signing a document at the time he got his new liver promising that he would never drink again), I think he may use this as an opportunity to redeem himself by playing the role of the defender of ordinary working Australians. I think he will make demands on the government that he knows they will probably never accept, as a justification for voting against the legislation. He has already muted a couple of things that he has in mind.

    It would also not surprise me if he announces that he and Storer, who is now and independent, will vote as a block on this matter. He has done that kind of thing before, though I can’t remember what the issue was. Anyway we’ll know next week whether I’m on the right track or not.

  24. Rick Wilson‏Verified account @TheRickWilson

    The funny thing is, this entire Bolton explosion will be gone in a couple of days and we’ll be on to the next batshit lunacy

  25. I’m looking forward to dtt’s comments on the appointment of John Bolton.

    Perhaps there is an even more extreme Democrat hawk that Hillary would have appointed as NSA!

  26. lizzie @ #114 Friday, March 23rd, 2018 – 10:55 am

    Open complaints about ABC come more often now. Also I have noticed that in Mal’s PR stunts with businesses, he cuts across the CEOs when he doesn’t think they’re hitting the right note, and finishes their speeches for them. Very tactful, I don’t think.

    KHTAGH‏ @khtagh · 2h2 hours ago

    Bloody hell ABC stop this, you just had pyne spinning like a top on company tax cuts, & when it’s Albo’s reply you bloody cut him off!!! I have had a gut full of your perverting the interviews for the LNP aggrandizement & nobbling the ALP

    More and more people are waking up to ABC’s perverted news values, since it’s becoming as obvious as dog’s balls, as they say.

  27. Darn

    I am hoping you are right in your theory.

    It would certainly explain the way Labor is attacking One Nation. Showing Hinch and Storrer what to expect.

    Also despite media writing as if its a done deal Hinch knows he is dealing with a merchant banker as PM

  28. Also keep in mind that Lleyonhelm is threatening to walk if Turnbull gives in re: banks.

    Turnbull might gain 1 vote and lose another.

  29. Speaking of Storer, why is no-one mentioning him? If he votes NO Hinch, Hansen and all the others become irrelevant. The legislation fails.

  30. Voice Endeavour @ #142 Friday, March 23rd, 2018 – 11:37 am

    Also keep in mind that Lleyonhelm is threatening to walk if Turnbull gives in re: banks.

    Turnbull might gain 1 vote and lose another.

    Leyonhjelm won’t walk. Unlike the Greens, he is not willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater, no matter how ugly and despicable the baby is.

  31. Morgan and Morgan files 1st class-action lawsuit in Facebook data breach

    Law firm Morgan and Morgan said Wednesday it has filed the first class-action lawsuit from the data breach of more than 50 million users on Facebook by Cambridge Analytica.

    He continued by alleging that Cambridge Analytica waged “psychological warfare” against unsuspecting and non-consenting Facebook users.

    The research firm Cambridge Analytica was found to have used Facebook to gather data about tens of millions of Americans. It then transferred the data to an analytics company that would eventually work for President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.

    http://www.mynews13.com/content/news/cfnews13/news/article.html/content/news/articles/cfn/2018/3/21/morgan_and_morgan_fi.html

  32. This is where we will end up if we don’t have privacy as a key right for citizens
    Patrick Wood – @StopTechnocracy: in China, you can’t run and you can’t hide. Imagine 100,000 cameras connected in real-time to a facial recognition supercomputer running AI. In 2 minutes flat, they can find you anywhere. #StopTechnocracy http://ow.ly/8N3e30j5uOT

  33. Darn @ #144 Friday, March 23rd, 2018 – 11:39 am

    Speaking of Storer, why is no-one mentioning him? If he votes NO Hinch, Hansen and all the others become irrelevant. The legislation fails.

    Because he has been stone cold silent. A few journos have noted the fact that he has not given a whisper of what he is thinking, but once you’ve reported that, there is nothing else to say – and the 24/7 news cycle needs fresh feeding all the time.

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