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.
Wayne @ #88 Saturday, August 11th, 2018 – 10:46 am
Daisy, daisy…
@Nick
And you only aiming this at Husar right?
‘verbally abusing your staff.’
Unless you have evidence of that then you making it up, that is not what the report said, only what workman from Buzzfeed accused Emma of and now you accusing of.
This article by Peter Harcher is … well, the only word I can think of is amoral …
https://www.smh.com.au/national/plan-or-perish-management-can-solve-population-anxiety-20180809-p4zwll.html
First, he cleverly resurrects “yellow peril” fear mongering. Then, he claims that the main problem with our population growth is congestion in Sydney and Melbourne. Then he goes on to say concern about population growth must be racially based (Sudanese gangs gets a couple of mentions). Then he goes on to claim any movement to reduce population growth must be politically motivated. Then he goes on to claim that the “biggest Australia” policy is a result of a “consensus”. A consensus of whom exactly – given that it has been done essentially by stealth, and without public acknowledgement or consultation – is not explained. He even manages to throw in fear of Trump, and how we can no longer depend on our old alliances – i.e. again the old “populate or perish” argument.
Having raised this mish-mash of strawmen, he proceeds to argue against them (not difficult, since none of them make much sense), and then finally lets the cat out of the bag – our need to grow at unprecedented and unsustainable rates is really an economic imperative. Like a Ponzi scheme, immigration is the the only thing keeping our economy growing. He apparently can’t see anything wrong with this, or that there could be any reason why you would not want to proceed down this path.
As I said … amoral is the only description that fits 🙁
Poor Rex still hasn’t gotten over the humiliating result for the Greens in Batman, I see. If they couldn’t win it in a by-election, they sure aren’t going to win it in the real thing where the focus will be on changing the government, and against a strong incumbent. Bandt will still be on his own this time next year.
Nicholas
It has been decided that much of the scurrilous stuff cannot be proved, and has obviously been created by someone trying to bring Husar down. I suspect by the employee who was fired, who got the huff because he was asked to wash some dishes. (See also zoomster, above) Have you thought that this might include the language you seem fixated on?
Rex
So an MP should pay a personal assistant just to dash to the shops to grab a litre of milk? Seems very wasteful to me.
Well Shorten is both a problem and not a problem for Labor. True hes not broadly popular but as Abott demonstrated you dont have to be to win an election. Plus opposition leaders tend to have bad/negative approval ratings versus the incumbent.
Imagine the scenario: you’re the MP. You’re in a meeting with a distraught constituent, which is going longer than you expected because their circumstances are very complicated. You need something from a shop which closes at 5 pm, and it’s now 4.45.
Do you —
(i) tell the distraught constituent that you have to nip down the shops, so can they please pull themselves together and get their a*se out of your office?
(ii) ring the person you have on call to deal with minor issues like this on a casual basis, because really these situations aren’t common enough for you to employ someone full time, and ask them to drive into town and go to the shop;
or
(iii) put your head around the door and ask someone in the office if they mind nipping down the shops and buying the item?
No, we need to set and enforce high standards for all MPs.
The fact that other MPs have gotten away with poor performance is not a compelling argument for excusing poor performance in this case.
Nothing will improve if you indulge the mindless partisan sentiment that props up the current low standards of behaviour.
zoomster @ #105 Saturday, August 11th, 2018 – 11:20 am
An MP should keep their personal affairs personal.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/accused-of-bullying-it-s-hard-not-to-conclude-the-bullies-have-won-20180809-p4zwg7.html
Lovey @ #96 Saturday, August 11th, 2018 – 11:04 am
Do try and keep up. I didn’t say the article was anti-Labor, I said it clearly showed bias – possibly unconscious.
Even when Murphy is trying to write an article pointing out deep flaws in the coalition, she can’t help but end the article with “But Labor is just as bad, and in a different universe Bill would already be a goner!”
Why? What did this add to the article?
zoomster @ #108 Saturday, August 11th, 2018 – 11:24 am
(iv) perhaps find a less demanding career.
Come to think of it, I have often performed errands in just those kinds of circumstances for work mates, people who were my peers, not my employer. I must put in a retrospective complaint – fancy helping out someone else when they needed it! In my defence, I didn’t feel exploited at the time. I foolishly thought I was just making myself useful.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-10/emma-husar-investigation-finds-staff-unreasonably-managed/10106424
Unreasonable management
Unreasonable communication
Unreasonable demands
Unreasonable practices
Unreasonable disciplinary practices
She fell short of satisfactory conduct. We should be setting high standards for MPs’ conduct. They are highly paid and that comes with a high level of responsibility. High standards need to be expected of all MPs. If you carve out exceptions for the people you like, nothing will get better.
Arguably worse than that, didn’t her partner actually sit in on a UN hearing or panel or something in her place?
Rex Douglas @ #110 Saturday, August 11th, 2018 – 11:25 am
Someone should have told Barnaby that!
Rex
Get real. No matter how realistic you are about your career and its demands, there are times when you’re going to look to other workmates to help you out (no man is an island, and all that). That’s not a sign of weakness or incompetence. It’s called life.
…but strangely, the man who compiled that list – and actually heard the evidence – said that none of those things should disqualify Husar as an MP.
I object to the scurrilous and derogatory references to drunken sailors.
Many of my fondest (blurred) memories have the very same drunken sailors or close older relatives contained therein.
Drunken sailors ✔✔✔
Complainors about drunken sailors 👎👎👎
BK @ 11.06
I don’t get that at all.
Unless he’s saying we are only complaining because we haven’t been given $444 million of other people’s money. To which the answer is Too Bloody Right.
If Malcolm wants to give me $444 million of government revenue I promise to not kick up a fuss. However, I could well understand the other 24,999,999 other Australians who don’t get this largesse complaining. Especially those who complain when some poor bastard gets $100 more from Centrelink than they are entitled to and find it difficult to pay that back because the money has already gone on food and rent.
Today’s PvO is on Micahelia Cash and how IR reform is now dead within the Liberal party.
zoomster @ #118 Saturday, August 11th, 2018 – 11:32 am
You’re trying to defend the indefensible.
Rex and Nicholas are ignorant numpties when it comes to the real world. Both belong in some far left equivalent of the IPA generating economic theory based on axioms which are only axioms because they are too terrified to actually try and prove them.
I’ve worked for people like them, who follow their rule book calmly and dispassionately but destroy lives and workplace value through ignorance.
They are the last people to discuss the difficulties of working in an incredible hothouse atmosphere with.
I do hope Rex and Nicholas have employers who set the same standards for them that they set for others.
“Sorry I’m late, boss, I had to take a mate to hospital.”
“You’re sacked. You should have factored the possibility that your mate would get sick and need to be rushed to a hospital at some point and realised you weren’t able to meet the demands of this position.”
@Nick
You obviously hadn’t had a job.
I’ve done things that are not in my job description but staff of an MP get paid very well.
They are in a very secure job.
Would like to work for an MP myself instead of whinging former staff..
sprocket_ @ #80 Saturday, August 11th, 2018 – 10:26 am
Has anyone ever told you that single seat polls are not worth a pinch of shite?
For those who have not read it, I copy Lizzie’s link to the Stephanie Dowrick article. She totally nails it. And why people like me and Bushfire Bill, who have seen close up the vicious brutal pursuit by the media and political nasties of individuals who have no protection systems in place, have been defensive of Husar, even if she might have been a nightmare to work for.
Good people who don’t cope need to be helped and assisted and supported if they are willing to accept it. Not hounded to destruction or even worse by others pursuing not justice but their own, far more criminal agendas.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/accused-of-bullying-it-s-hard-not-to-conclude-the-bullies-have-won-20180809-p4zwg7.html
Wow! This story is one to watch!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-11/monsanto-ordered-to-pay-289-million-to-school-groundskeeper/10109352
Sexist.
It’s so easy to predict what the CPG will do and say that you wonder why they even exist.
Good morning all,
Turnbull and others can huff and puff all they like re Emmar Hussar.
The bottom line is the Dept of Finance is the employer of the staff who have complained about Hussar. Staff approached the Dept. with concerns and the Dept did nothing.
Now, if Turnbull wants to push this, which he will, the Dept of Finance will come under the pump from labor especially around its refusal to act on staff concerns bought to its attention initially.
If Turnbull and others push for matters to be referred to Fair Work etc then the Dept of Finance, as the employer,will be dragged in.
Where was its duty of care to the staff it employs ? If the department had acted at that time then perhaps many of the staff may still be working for Hussar.
All the bullshit about Shorten and labor not doing anything and it was the Finance department failures that led to this point.
Cheers.
Nick hasn’t been inside many real workplaces has he?
DTT
Quite a few American presidents were great people managers. Lincoln was legendary at it as was LBJ. JFK was also excellent.
Workman has 39500 followers.
That gives her lots of power to throw muck.
Diog
‘JFK was also excellent.’
Yeah, if you ignore the fact he was sleeping with the secretaries….
“Workman has 39500 followers.”
She had at least 1 more a few weeks ago, I don’t blame her for getting sucked in by the assholes that played her for a complete fool, but her reaction afterwards was pathetic. Buzzfeed Oz also got blocked yesterday when they let Nick write the headline for their Emma story (don’t mention anything positive).
N obviously has nothing more useful to do with his time than to gratify his own sense of superiority by ponticating on the supposed flaws of a first term female back bench politician, a woman who has been bullied into retreat by cowards and liars. What a useless walloper he is.
“Quite a few American presidents were great people managers. Lincoln was legendary at it as was LBJ. JFK was also excellent.”
I’m not quite sure how you’d objectively characterise that unless you were in the room, I could understand you were in the room with Lincoln but surely LBJ or JFK wouldn’t have let you anywhere near them?
z
Yes he made Barnaby look like a celibate monk.
Had a run in with Spud Murphy on Twitter this morning:
Grimace: @murpharoo #auspol if @billshortenmp had of given 443.8m to a union with the same lake of process as #ReefGate you and the rest of the CPG would be hysterical with Kill Bill. What’s your excuse for not going after Turnbull?
Murphy: My colleague Lisa Cox is all over this story and doing a great job. My eyes are needed elsewhere at the moment. What’s your excuse for hanging round my timeline, having a swing?
Grimace: My excuse is that I expect better from the Guardian, something different to what we’ve had for years from Fairfax and News LTD.
Weve had years of Kill Bill and nothing has ever actually happened. We’ve had years of Turnbull needing 1 last reset before things will be good.
Grimace: Perhaps there is a story in WHY nothing has ever happened to Shorten and WHY disasters keep happening to Turnbull.
Grimace: Instead of repeating the same rubbish from the same insiders day after day, perhaps you could call them out on reporting the same rubbish to you and refuse to publish until they deliver something credible.
Murphy: Perhaps you could get yourself another hobby than screeching on the web. Just a thought. Entirely up to you of course. A lot of people like having tantrums here.
*******************
Words fail me…
The political story of the decade is breaking and Spud Murphy is too busy to cover it.
There are plenty of autobiographies written by people who worked daily with those three.
Just read Murphy’s article – and it doesn’t disparage Labor … basically it says Labor has time to hone its message where it needs to while the Coalition has land mines to try and avoid.
TPOF @ #128 Saturday, August 11th, 2018 – 11:47 am
Similarly one in the Age by Nick O’Malley is good. Gone off the landing page now.
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/emma-husar-has-supporters-and-critics-but-there-is-one-thing-that-all-sides-agree-upon-20180810-p4zwrk.html
“There are plenty of autobiographies written by people who worked daily with those three.”
Yeah but they would say that wouldn’t they.
grimace @ #142 Saturday, August 11th, 2018 – 12:26 pm
Sadly, an all too familiar story. How does she keep her job?
grimace @ #141 Saturday, August 11th, 2018 – 12:25 pm
Lisa Cox is their environmental reporter. Clearly, Murphy thinks this is an environmental story and not a political story.
As you say … words fail …
It would appear that the union directors of industry funds, whose members are largely union members, actually DO put the fund members’ interests first and foremost.
As for the retail funds . . . . we are finding this out by the day at the royal commission.
From Dowricks article linked by TPOF and lizzie….
I reckon many journos either do not realise this or are blasé about it. Many others do realise it and wield it in deliberate attempts to sway opinion and election results due to political allegiances. Both sets show a deprivation of professional integrity by ‘journos’ untrained or uncaring in their ethics.
Journalism is dying.
1. Journalism is full of political operatives. Seems it is either a wise career move into or out of politics, an alternate option to be politically active without being a politician, or just a way to toady. This flies in the face of the definition of the profession.
2. They refuse strong oversight braying censorship from free speech. Which is BS. If you want to write articles saying crap – go for it, just dont call yourself a journalist. If you want to call yourself a journalist and write crap, then expect to be hauled before an independent ethics committee of esteemed peers and suffer accreditation penalties.
3. there is a lack of obvious markers for the public when choosing to read genuine journalistic content. All mainstream media outlets (and even individual journos) now publish a mixture of ‘opinion’, clickbait, crap and serious journalism. Gone are the days you can choose an outlet or a journo with confidence of quality, instead you now need the expertise of a quality journalist to safely examine and digest what you read.
Journalists need to take their profession seriously and the only way to do this is to be properly accredited through education, on the job training, professional body examination, CPD and strong and enforced guidelines. Then there needs to be a clear distinction (easily identifiable) between articles written within those journalistic guidelines and articles that are not.
And finally, the tango between people in politics and people journalism needs to end. They are diametrically opposed. Dipoles. Mutually exclusive.