Two privately conducted ReachTEL polls from the past week to relate, followed by enough federal preselection news to choke on. Also note immediately below this the post on a new YouGov Galaxy state poll from Queensland. I should also observe that September 8 has been set as the date for the Wagga Wagga state by-election in New South Wales, to be held after Liberal member Daryl Maguire fell foul of the Independent Commission Against Corruption. It presumably won’t be contested by Labor and will probably be of interest only to locals, but Antony Green naturally has a guide up.
On with the show:
• The Guardian reports a poll conducted for the ACTU has Labor leading 51-49 on two-party preferred. Other findings of the poll relate to wage rises, or the lack thereof: 47.6% reported not having received one in the past year, 32.9% said such as they had received did not cover the cost of living, and only 19.5% said their pay had improved in real terms. The poll was conducted on August 2 from a sample of 2453.
• Greenpeace has a Victoria only poll which, after exclusion of the 6.7% undecided, has the Coalition on 35.4% (compared with 41.8% at the 2016 election), Labor on 34.9% (35.6%), the Greens on an unlikely 18.6% (13.1%) and One Nation on 5.1%. Labor leads 57-43 on two-party preferred, compared with 51.8-48.2 at the election. The poll was conducted July 30 from a sample of 1118.
The preselection news bonanza starts in Victoria, where internal party democracy has been having a rough time of it lately, with Labor’s national executive and the Liberal Party’s state administrative committee both taking over federal preselections to protect sitting members amid factional unrest.
• The Labor vacancy created by the retirement of Michael Danby in Macnamara, as Melbourne Ports will now be known, is set to be filled by one of his former staffers, Josh Burns. The seat is reserved to the Right under factional arrangements, and Burns prevailed in a factional ballot with 61 votes to 49 for Nick Dyrefurth, executive director of the John Curtin Research Centre, and 16 for Mary Delahunty, a Glen Eira councillor (numbers related by Emma-Jayne Schenk of the Caulfield Glen Eira Leader). Delahunty called on the national executive to disregard the result, accusing Danby of hand-picking the attendees to the meeting and seeing that others were locked out, and complaining that 85% of those present were male.
• United Voice state secretary Jess Walsh will take second position on Labor’s Victorian Senate ticket after winning Socialist Left endorsement at the expense of incumbent Gavin Marshall. Marshall has been demoted to what is being described as an unwinnable position – number three according to the Herald Sun, though reports vary. The result is a defeat for Socialist Left powerbroker and Marshall ally Kim Carr, whose influence has diminished in the face of a new alliance between the Industrial Left and Right forces associated with state MP Adem Somyurek. It also contradicts the justification for referring preselections to the national executive, which was to protect sitting members.
• The Herald Sun reports a factional deal has set up state upper house member Daniel Mulino to run in the new safe Labor seat of Fraser in western Melbourne, making his existing seat in Eastern Victoria available for Jane Garrett. This was supported by Bill Shorten, and bitterly opposed by Garrett’s foes in the United Firefighters Union. Garrett is backed by the Industrial Left, which has been determined to find her a new seat after she abandoned her existing berth of Brunswick, where she is under growing pressure from the Greens. Mulino is aligned with the Right faction Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association (although the internal politics of that union is a story unto itself), which was at first unhappy at losing influence within the state government, but has been mollified with the promise of an extra state seat.
• Jenny Macklin’s successor in Jagajaga, which is reserved to the Socialist Left, will be Kate Thwaites, a former staffer to Macklin, ABC journalist and, most recently, communications director at Victoria’s Department of Health and Human Services. Thwaites won factional backing ahead of Sonja Terpstra, a local teacher and community activist.
• The Victorian Liberal Party’s administrative committee has rubber-stamped the preselections of all sitting federal MPs, ostensibly to prevent the party from being distracted in the lead-up to the November 29 state election. However, the real story by all accounts is that the dominant conservative faction wishes to protect Kevin Andrews in Menzies, who faced a challenge from Keith Wolahan, a former Blake Dawson lawyer who earlier served overseas with the Australian Defence Force.
Elsewhere:
• Matthew Killoran of The Courier-Mail reports five candidates are seeking preselection for a Queensland Senate position reserved to the Left, which is being vacated with the retirement of Claire Moore. The front runner by all accounts is Nita Green, a former staffer to Senator Murray Watt, who is backed by the CFMMEU. This is despite Green being based in Brisbane, and party rules reserving the spot for central or north Queensland (Green says she will move there if successful). Others in the field are Leanne Donaldson, who held the state seat of Bundaberg from 2015 until her defeat in 2017, and lost her position in cabinet when it emerged she had failed to pay nearly $8000 in council rates; Julie McGlone, Tourism Australia marketing executive; Tania Major, Cairns-based indigenous youth advocate; and Karin Campbell, an occupational health and safety consultant.
• Paul Starick of The Advertiser reports that Georgina Downer, who for some reason wants to run in Mayo again, will face opposition from Reagan Garner, human resources manager for ReturnToWorkSA. However, Starick reports Downer is the “overwhelming favourite”.
• Sally Whyte of the Canberra Times reports there are five nominees for Labor preselection in Canberra, where a vacancy is available as a result of the Australian Capital Territory’s House of Representatives seat entitlement increasing from two to three. They are John Falzon, chief executive of St Vincent de Paul; Kel Watt, a lobbyist for the greyhound racing industry; Jacob Ingram, a staffer to Chief Minister Andrew Barr; Simon Banks, managing director for lobbyists Hawker Britton; and Alicia Payne, who has worked as a staffer to Jenny Macklin, Bill Shorten and Lindsay Tanner. Falzon has been endorsed by the Left, Watt and Ingram are seeking endorsement from the Right, and Banks and Payne are unaligned. Falzon has been in the news lately after a picture emerged of him wearing a t-shirt with Lenin emblazoned on it, while Watt has been the target of a dirt sheet being circulated within the local party. The preselection process will be completed early next month.
• In South Australia, Labor will deal with the abolition of Port Adelaide by having the homeless Mark Butler run in Hindmarsh, and moving Hindmarsh MP Steve Georganas to neighbouring Adelaide. The latter is being vacated by Kate Ellis, and has turned from a marginal to a fairly safe Labor seat as a result of the redistribution changes. Paul Karp of The Guardian reports the deal involves a Senate seat being forfeited by the Left, of which Butler is a member, with the top two positions on the Senate ticket to be taken by the Right.
• Nathan Hondros of Fairfax reports Labor’s likely new candidate for the marginal Liberal seat of Hasluck in eastern Perth is James Martin, Mundaring Shire councillor and director of Marketech Ltd, a firm that develops stock market trading software. The position became vacant after the withdrawal of Lauren Palmer, an official with the Maritime Union of Australia, who cited health reasons. Andrew Burrell of The Australian reports Martin is a member of the Progressive Left faction, which combines forces of the Right (the SDA, TWU and AWU) and Left (the MUA and CFMMEU).
• Luke Hartsuyker announced this week he will not seek another term in the mid north coast New South Wales seat of Cowper, which he has held for the Nationals since 2001. No word yet on who might succeed him as Nationals candidate, but Rob Oakeshott, who ran unsuccessfully against Hartsuyker in 2016, is not ruling out running again.
WB
Yes, yes, that is all very well, but you left out how the Democrat Senator Jews are spreading Ebola through the Congo.
generation only accounts for 25 percent of electricity bills
biggest prices rises are in transmission and distribution – the regulated rate of return on investment is too generous
second biggest price rise is in retail (the companies that read your meter and send you a bill) – problems in retail are:
-contrived competition, not genuine competition
-duplicated administration
-advertising costs
-customer search costs
-bargaining costs with networks
the National Energy Guarantee is a poor idea because it focuses on generation, which isn’t the main contributor to electricity price increases
there was a case for privatising the generation of electricity, but no case for privatising transmission and distribution and retail, no case for structural separation (of generation from the other elements of electricity provision – transmission, distribution, retail), no case for commercialising electricity provision (should be based on public purpose, not profit-maximization)
https://www.michaelwest.com.au/declare-neg-dead-buried-and-wait-for-the-election/
How to extract ‘facts’ by misquoting. A Coalition speciality.
phoenixRED @ #740 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 5:25 pm
Exactly so. I remember a few days ago someone was calling for a greater public respect of Government/Parliament in general. Then I contrast that with the fact that basically everyone on both sides of politics carries on like tantrum-prone 5-year-olds for the entirety of QT, and conclude that the demand is unreasonable.
Our MP’s need to behave in a respectable manner before they can be entitled to any extra respect from the electorate.
Re: The Greenpeace “poll”. Who did they poll, their own mailing list? 18% is a Tasmanian figure, and even that only in the past!
On the national scale: The more Coalition shonkiness I’m seeing while they’re in Government, the more I’m convinced of the need for sweeping Constitutional change. Our current arrangements did fairly well while both major parties were (more-or-less) respectable folks who abided by the unwritten assumptions underpinning the whole thing; this generation of RWNJ pollies are terrifying me in their disregard for convention, transparency, accountability or honesty.
At a minimum, I’d want:
* One Constitutional article laying out methods by which the Government MUST make key information on significant financial outlays available, to prevent the super-opacity and “You don’t need to know that” mentality on display; and
* One Bill of Rights (content negotiable), laying out a bare-minimum set of rights to be afforded to ALL citizens of Australia regardless of what dog-whistle the Coalition blows. Given the contentious and problematic nature of the actual content of the Bill of Rights, I’d probably go for this as a two-ballot smorgasbord:
Ballot 1: Do you support, in concept, Australia adopting a Bill of Rights? Y/N
Ballot 2: If Australia *does* adopt a Bill of Rights, please indicate which (if any) of the following Rights you would wish to be included in it:
a) (Y/N)
b) (Y/N)
c) (Y/N)
d) (Y/N)
etc.
The conditions to be laid out beforehand, that there would ONLY be a Bill of Rights if Ballot 1 satisfied the Constitutional requirement (double-majority), and that ONLY the Rights which also satisfy the requirement to be included in it. It’ll be somewhat minimalist, since it’s hard to forge that kind of consensus these days, but at least it’d be something. A modest, but significant, public funds outlay would go toward clearing up the Murdoch media’s inevitable spin against the concept.
Why do I consider this a necessity? I’m looking at America – about the only thing consistently getting in the way of Trump’s efforts to turn America Fascist are the dam’ uppity judges, ruling against his ideas time and again on basis of the US Bill of Rights. We have no such protections here, and between our “Government’s” blatant disregard for the wellbeing of its citizenry, and Abbott’s increasingly Trumpian rhetoric…I don’t like where we’re headed.
lizzie
The dredging story was, IMO, the most egregious of Frydenberg’s furphies during Insiders.
William Bowe @ #741 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 5:28 pm
William
Facts are facts. So I suggest you go check them If the source I linked is wrong then so be it. I am not claiming to have checked it. If it is correct then an apology is in order.
I did not write the article I linked. It is up to others to judge its truth or not. Since there is a list of actual names I am assuming that it is true. The USA does not have dual citizenship rules, so there would be no legal reason for people not to have Israeli citizenship.
My guess is that there is probably some status (and a bit of electoral funding) going for those who are eligible to be Israeli citizens.
In any case the question I was answering was about Bernie Sanders. I had read it in an article recently. However i have just checked and Bernie Sanders denies it so I guess the whole article can be treated as rubbish.
Possibly (and this is just guessing) all Jewish people have the RIGHT of Israeli citizenship so some people assumed it is dual citizenship.
Perhaps the pink shirts caused Melbourne to choke?
Boerwar
Frydenberg is rumoured to be very bright. Wouldn’t it be good if he would use his ‘brightness’ to the benefit of his double-barrelled ministry, instead of perfecting misquoting and downright lies. 🙁
Our great LNP will win the next election and our great PM Malcom Turnbull will be returned as our PM for another Three years and Bill Shorten will be dump as as labor leader and Chris Bowen will replace him as labor leader and still will not be able to win in three years time as our great Australian people do not trust the labor party to run the country as the spend like drunken sailors and let people smugglers start there trade again which we will see death at sea again…only Our great LNP will stop the people smugglers.
Holy shit. You actually just said that.
lizzie
Frydenber obviously does not give a sh*t about the environment.
Boerwar
Q.E.D.
TPOF says:
Sunday, August 12, 2018 at 5:07 pm
DTT
Like Mr Attlee you are setting up a straw man in order to obsess about not being called antisemitic for opposing Israel. Honestly, don’t you people have anything better to do?
Well said TPOF!!
DaretoTread @ #759 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 5:57 pm
So “facts are facts” whether they are true are not?
Well, at least we have an answer to whether or not this is a parody account.
Without mentioning her by name, the Insiders panel skewered Ms Workman this morning. One hundred per cent.
William Bowe @ #748 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 5:40 pm
William
I did NOT say approvingly and specifically indicated the heading was wrong. I was asked why I thought Bernie was a dual citizen and I linked what I could find.
It would seem however that the authors of the article probably maliciously have confused right of citizenship with actually having dual citizenship- the John Alexander/Banaby scenario – ie from parents.
Wayne @ #762 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 6:01 pm
Now, this is how you do a parody account! 🙂
DTT remains the most disingenuous of Bludgers….no fraud is too egregious for them.
Bullshit. You made a wild accusation against Sanders and other members of Congress, and latched onto the first link you could find that backed your crazy conspiracy theories.
DTT
My guess is that there is probably some status (and a bit of electoral funding) going for those who are eligible to be Israeli citizens.
_____________________________-
On what basis do you guess this?
DTT will use any calumny, including anti-Semitic sledging, to advance their Trumpist propaganda.
It’s great how Rowe weaves Abbott (with extremely wide mouth) into the picture. A few days ago he was a fireplace grate, today he’s a razor.
lizzie @ #752 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 5:43 pm
Another matter where CPG have no interest in investigating or running an article on this. The admin costs, the LNP connection who own the business etc.
The conflicts of interests.
FMD useless media.
citizen:
Well spotted re the Abbott razor, I’d missed that.
David Rowe cartoon: always so much to see.
Wayne “…Bill Shorten will be dump [sic] as as [sic] labor leader…”
This is the third time that ‘Wayne’ has made this post in this thread (that I’ve noticed), including grammatical errors, typos and lack of punctuation, pretty much unrelated to the ongoing discussion. Maybe he is a robot.
lol the Rowe cartoon………Craig Kelly Merde….lol
google what merde means……lol
What do you think are the odds that NEG is going to be shot down by the Coalition party room?
Boerwar @ #768 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 6:06 pm
Yes, I was so pleased. I don’t think she’ll be getting an invite back onto the couch any time soon either.
Citizen@6:15pm
Rowe used MT (say those 2 alphabets)
Boer War do I see Groupers under every bed? No, but there are a fair few on here. Barely a cigarette paper separates them from the Tories. One good thing about coming on here is that you soon see that the Tories do not have a monopoly on intolerant, right wing, group think mind sets.
The NEG is a great scheme for doing nothing and the Coalition Party Room will So hold.
What do you think are the odds that NEG is going to be shot down by the Coalition party room?
The chances of the party room approving something that Lucien and Friedbot will call a NEG is probably pretty good.
The chances of that being anything other than a joke that the states will laugh out of the joint? SFA.
I thought Ms Savva was pretty good this morning as well. Without mentioning any names she got stuck into the Coalition’s racist dog whistling around immigration. Good on her, IMO.
Forget the Groupers.
Atlee was responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths before and during partition in India. Allocating less than a Division of British troops to control the mass murders shows the true depths of Atlee’s humanitarianism.
That and giving Staling the Rolls Royce jet engine.
My guess is that FrythePlanet and Turnbull will deliver two things: the NEG and, on the side, a shit load of money to set up coal fired power stations.
If Attlee had sent vast military forces into India at the time (which Britain in any case lacked the means to do), you would of course have said exactly the same thing.
Is there a worse political correspondent than Greg Jennett?
For mine, I can’t think of any bludgers that might be politically or intellectually descended from the Groupers, with the exception of DTT, who is clearly a conduit for rightist disinformation and interference.
@ratsak
Good analysis, however the Coalition party room approving the NEG is not to benefit the Coalition at all electorally.
TPOF @ #772 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 6:12 pm
Firstly TPOF
When i say guess that means guess. Not anything more or less. A guess. It is English.
Obviously there is funding coming from Israeli sources (Jared Kusher is the most obvious,) they will probably not be government but still Israeli. And yes there will be funding from UK, French, German Chinese and Russian sources from time to time. it depends of the deals being worked on at any given time. To deny this is simply childish. The US system is very heavily dependent on donations for running in primaries and then in the elections. This is so bloody obvious I am annoyed at being asked.
Now I cannot say whether it is still the case but in the 50s-70s it was common place for those of Jewish descent (and other of a socialist bent too) to travel to Israel to work on a kibbutz. It is not exactly hard to guess that some of those young enthusiasts would have taken up their right for Israeli citizenship, if only as a bit of a solidarity statement. Hence I do not find it unbelievable that a number of US politicians especially those over 60 could well have dual nationality.
WB
Nice try but no potato. You should stick with chastising DTT or DDT. Whomever.
(1) Britain had the means to do far more than it did. What Atlee clearly lacked was the will.
(2) Atlee withdrew two thirds of the British troops from India before Independence and before partition.
(3). Where there was prompt action by the British troops the general tendency was for the lid to be kept firmly on. Where the British were absent the massacres got out of hand. This is while the British, by way of Prime Minister Atlee, were still the colonial masters and therefore fully accountable for what was happening. Mountbatten kept Atlee fully informed at the time so ignorance is not even a possible excuse for Atlee.
(4). Since Atlee did not do all what he might have done there is no way for you to be able to predict what I would have said had he actually done so.
DaretoTread says:
Sunday, August 12, 2018 at 7:10 pm
When i say guess that means guess.
Bollocks. In your case it means outright falsification to add to your Trumpo-Putinist monologues.
Is there a worse political correspondent than Greg Jennett?
If there is don’t tell him. There’s probably no limit to his craptactularness if he felt a competitor was outdoing his efforts.
dtt
I have told you repeatedly – foreign donations are prohibited under US law.
‘Foreign nationals
Campaigns may not solicit or accept contributions from foreign nationals. Federal law prohibits contributions, donations, expenditures and disbursements solicited, directed, received or made directly or indirectly by or from foreign nationals in connection with any election — federal, state or local. This prohibition includes contributions or donations made to political committees and building funds and to make electioneering communications. Furthermore, it is a violation of federal law to knowingly provide substantial assistance in the making, acceptance or receipt of contributions or donations in connection with federal and nonfederal elections to a political committee, or for the purchase or construction of an office building. This prohibition includes, but is not limited to, acting as a conduit or intermediary for foreign national contributions and donations.’
https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/candidate-taking-receipts/who-can-and-cant-contribute/
Gee DTT
My guess is that you are a paid provocateur from Russia. Just a guess. No evidence other than the dirt under the nail of my little toe.
Seriously, these are not guesses but utter prejudices.
And people like you are Netanyahu’s best friend – because you – and the racist criminals who wrote that blog you linked to – support Netanyahu’s position that Jewish people will never be secure unless they control their own security in their own land and that what happens to the Palestinians is unfortunate but necessary.
For years we’ve grappled with Climate Change and the true cause was hiding in plain sight all the time.
..I will add, if you go into this further, this includes corporations or partnerships or other entities which MIGHT possibly funnel money from foreign nationals into a campaign as well – in other words, rather than risk that happening, a whole raft of different organisations are banned from making any contribution whatsoever just in case they might be making a contribution on behalf of a foreign national.