Après le déluge

Situations vacant for aspiring Liberals, first in Wentworth, now in Chisholm, and perhaps soon in Curtin. Also: polls for the ACT Senate and next weekend’s New South Wales state by-election in Wagga Wagga, neither good for the Libs.

Post-leadership change turbulence costs the Liberals a sitting MP in a crucial marginal seat, as preselection hopefuls jockey for safe seat vacancies:

• Liberal MP Julia Banks yesterday announced she will not recontest her Melbourne seat of Chisholm, citing bullying she was subjected to ahead of last week’s leadership vote by the anti-Malcolm Turnbull camp. Banks won the seat on the retirement of Labor member Anna Burke in 2016, making her the only Coalition member to gain a seat from Labor at the election. Rob Harris of the Herald Sun reports the Liberals will choose their new candidate in a community preselection, which presumably entails an open primary style arrangement in which anyone on the electoral roll can participate. Labor has endorsed Jennifer Yang, former adviser to Bill Shorten and mayor of Manningham who ran second as a candidate in the Melbourne lord mayoral election in May, finishing 3.0% behind winning candidate Sally Capp after preferences. The party initially preselected the unsuccessful candidate from 2016, former Monash mayor Stefanie Perri, but she announced her withdrawal in May, saying she had been deterred by the expreience of Tim Hammond.

• Alexandra Smith of the Sydney Morning Herald cites “several senior Liberals” who say the “only real contenders” for the Wentworth preselection are Dave Sharma, former ambassador to Israel, and Andrew Bragg, a director at the Business Council of Australia and former leader of the Yes same-sex marriage survey campaign. The report says Sharma has moderate factional support, including from powerbroker Michael Photios, while Bragg is supported in local branches. It also says it is no foregone conclusion that Labor will contest the seat, despite having an election candidate in place in Tim Murray, managing partner of investment research firm J Capital. An earlier report by Alexandra Smith suggested Christine Forster’s bid for Liberal preselection appeared doomed in part because, as an unidentified Liberal source put it: “She is an Abbott and how does that play in a Wentworth byelection? Not well I would suggest.”

• Primrose Riordan of The Australian identifies three potential candidates to succeed Julie Bishop in Curtin, assuming she retires. They are Emma Roberts, a BHP corporate lawyer who contested the preselection to succeed Colin Barnett in the state seat of Cottesloe, but was defeated by David Honey; Erin Watson-Lynn, director of Asialink Diplomacy at the University of Melbourne; and Rick Newnham, chief econmist at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

• Sally Whyte of the Canberra Times reports a Greens-commissioned ReachTEL poll of the Canberra electorate suggests ACT Liberal Senator Zed Seselja’s role in Malcolm Turnbull’s demise may have put his seat in danger. Elections for the ACT’s two Senate seats have always resulted in one seat each for Labor, but the Liberal seat could potentially fall to the Greens if its vote fell significantly below one third. After allocating results of a forced response question for the initially undecided, the results are Labor 39.6%, the Greens 24.2%, Liberal 23.7% and One Nation 2.8%. Even accounting for the fact that the Canberra electorate is particularly strong for the Greens, these numbers suggest there would be a strong possibility of Greens candidate Penny Kyburz overhauling Seselja on preferences. The poll also finds 64.6% of voters saying Seselja’s role in Turnbull’s downfall made them less likely to vote for him, with only 13.0% saying it made them more likely to, and 22.4% saying it made no difference. Among Liberal voters, the respective figures were 38.7%, 29.6% and 31.7%.

In other news, the Liberals in New South Wales are managing expectations ahead of a feared defeat in Saturday week’s Wagga Wagga state by-election, most likely at the hands of independent Joe McGirr. Andrew Clennell of The Australian reports a ReachTEL poll commissioned by Shooters Fishers and Farmers has the Liberals on 30.2%, Labor on 23.8%, McGirr on 18.4% and Shooters Fishers and Farmers on 10.9%, after exclusion of the 7.4% undecided. However, McGirr faces a complication in Shooters Fishers and Farmers’ unusual decision to direct preferences to Labor, which could potentially prevent him from overtaking them to make the final count. According to Clennell’s report, “any government loss post-mortem would be expected to focus on why the Liberals did not let the Nationals run for 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.

1,383 comments on “Après le déluge”

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  1. I love the traditional French breakfast, although I fear it is going out of style.

    I have often been in Paris for work, and choose hotels in the seedier parts within la Périphérique.

    One hotel included a traditional French breakfast: Tartine au beurre (i.e. last night’s baguette with some butter), with wonderful helpings of cafe au lait.

    Another where breakfast was not included, had a Tabac down the road. I got cafe au lait (now called cafe creme). The French workers came in and got a shot of black coffee, a shot of liquor, a lottery ticket, and a cigarette. Watching them, I realised I was doing breakfast all wrong.

  3. Also, thanks to William for keeping this blog going, and putting up with us!

    I learn much here, and when I am working out of Oz, it provides a link back to home.

    Remember to give early and give often to the Poll Bludger Donation drive.

  5. D&M

    One hotel included a traditional French breakfast: Tartine au beurre (i.e. last night’s baguette with some butter), with wonderful helpings of cafe au lait.

    _____________________

    Try Germany. The food, the people, the ambience, the willingness to help strangers.

    You’ll never look back. France sucks big time.

  6. My most disastorius night’s sleep was a park bench in Heraklion, Crete. Twas the night before a flight back to the UK with my current partner on our first overseas holiday in the late 1970s. Slept pretty well on the back of some wonderful Ouzo but was eaten alive by mosquitos that had a particular interest in my eyelids. Woke up and could barely see. Had a wonderful tan but returned to the UK looking like Id been beaten up.

  7. So, back from Vienna. It was lovely, but I picked up some horrible stomach bug. I managed to get to the business meetings I needed to, but then spent too much time being sick back in the hotel room.

    I am most annoyed because if I was not really sick, I could have pretended to be sick and skived off to discover Vienna, the music and the art.

    Nevermind, next year in June I will work in Budapest for a month – 3 hours to Vienna by train – and will open a weekend there then.

  8. Confessions @ #1274 Friday, August 31st, 2018 – 8:07 pm

    The French come second with croissants.

    I’ve never been to France, but French ‘breakfasts’ in Vietnam and Laos that I’ve had are more than just croissants. I think it’s incredibly civilised to select cheeses, cold meats, different breads and pickled veg for breakfast. Sometimes on weekends we’ll have brunch consisting of a grazing platter of cheese, meats, salami, smoked salmon, capers, olives, sun-dried tomatoes and various breads and lavosh.

    Sounds exactly like what I have had in Austria! Perhaps European breakfast traditions are more flexible than we think!

  9. Boerwar says:
    Friday, August 31, 2018 at 8:54 pm
    Le petit déjeuner d’un dingo?

    ________________

    Been there. Done that.

    Bacon and eggs, toast and butter and honey wins hands down.

  10. Bernard Keane in today’s Crikey on how sensible climate policy is now up to the states if the coalition is miraculously re-elected. The answer however is to elect Labor to office. At least Labor isn’t so scared of the science on AGW and is prepared to legislate abatement targets, including renewable energy targets.

    How apt it was that new Energy Minister Angus Taylor spent half an hour hiding from the media yesterday after his first speech, sequestered from scrutiny and questions. It used to be that ministers gave speeches, then took questions and the media reported what was said. Now the speech is dropped to newspapers ahead of time, it is perfunctorily delivered and the minister hides from journalists afterwards. A truly efficient process would involve the minister not bothering to deliver the speech at all.

    More to the point, it was a perfect symbol of a government that has entered its fifth year of having no climate policy beyond a renewable energy target that has less than two years to run. The risible Emissions Reduction Fund continues to dribble money to lucky business participants, but even the government itself no longer pretends that’s a credible policy, and cut off its funding.

  12. Douglas and Milo. Had wonderful week in Budapest a couple of years ago. The Jewish quarter had some amazingly funky bars.

  13. In Paris I loved baguette with fresh farm cream cheese for breakfast – alas, now on keto diet, the baguette is out! But I do often make my own bread and have Kiri cream cheese with it for brekky.

  14. ajm:

    I wish Australian hotels would embrace the French/European breakfasts instead of the super-sweet pastries and stodgy English cooked breakfasts.

    #FirstWorldProblems

  16. D&M:

    Nevermind, next year in June I will work in Budapest for a month – 3 hours to Vienna by train – and will open a weekend there then.

    ____________________

    I can recommend the café/restaurant in the Vienna Natural History Museum. You will never be in a more beautiful environment for a restaurant, (look up at the ceilings!) and the food and service is superb.

  17. Hi to everyone.Been away for 3 months overseas and everything has politically changed.Turnbull gone.Morrison in charge.Libs imploding.Its a great time to be a poll bludger!!

  18. Tales of breakfast …

    Travelling in the UK a few years ago I had tired of the standard B and B Breakfast (eggs, bacon, sausage etc) and when I found myself and partner the only patrons in a small place just outside Edinburgh I asked the landlady for just scrambled eggs and toast.

    And mighty fine the eggs were, though I wondered to my companion how many eggs might have been in my serve.

    The next day they were just as good and as we were leaving I complimented the lady on her cooking.

    She was grateful for my praise and then I asked If I could be so rude as to enquire as to how many eggs she used.

    Only five ….

  21. Also from today’s Crikey, Cathy McGowan on Julia Banks. No chastisement of the Liberals for bullying Julia Banks out the door, just a tsk tsk, how terrible, and a ‘good on her!’ for making the decision to leave. Reading her comments I’m reminded of how women can aid and abet misogynistic and violent behaviour from men, even unwittingly.

    Julia [Banks] is a woman of extraordinary courage, [this is a] lesson for all our workplaces. If you’re not safe in your workplace, have the discussion with the people you’re responsible to and then leave. It would had have been terrible if she had been pressured into staying. That’s a really important message — if your workplace is not working out, you should leave.

    Everyone is jumping up and down and saying it’s bad that she’s going, but I say good on her.

    I don’t think this should stop women entering politics though. I think you should know your “why” or your motivation. To many women I say, come and work in my office and see if that’s what you really want. My advice for women is stand as an independent and win a country seat. I don’t get bullied.

    I think most of us can cope with people behaving badly, you only need to be part of any community group or netball group to know what that looks like, you get through life and learn to work around it. Or you know your boundaries and figure out when to leave.

  23. Douglas and Milko:

    I’ve never forgiven the the French for their capitulation. I had family die because of them. I count Pétain and his prime minister as war criminals. Stuff ‘Tartine au beurre’; please stop being prentious. No offence meant? I would add that I second-guessed BW on the issue recently; his reply: typically Dutch.

  24. I second Old Aunt Mavis, enough of all this Frenchy stuff. The only french saying Australians should utter is Horses Douvres.

  25. Douglas and Milko

    Bad luck about the illness in Vienna – but you’ll be back.

    For the true nerd experience in Vienna you can’t go past the Globenmuseum (Museum of world globes, quite fascinating for, um, nerds), and next door the equally nerdy Esperanto Museum!

    I am sure they are unique in the world.

  26. Confessions

    Didn’t need lunch …

    It sounds horrific I know but I find that often when travelling I am more active than at home with sightseeing etc and the extra fuel is welcome.

  27. I’m currently on the high speed (most of the time) train ftom Paris to Barcelona. Amazing trip.

    Paris is a lot of fun at night.

  28. Confessions:

    How apt it was that new Energy Minister Angus Taylor spent half an hour hiding from the media yesterday after his first speech, sequestered from scrutiny and questions. It used to be that ministers gave speeches, then took questions and the media reported what was said. Now the speech is dropped to newspapers ahead of time, it is perfunctorily delivered and the minister hides from journalists afterwards. A truly efficient process would involve the minister not bothering to deliver the speech at all.

    More to the point, it was a perfect symbol of a government that has entered its fifth year of having no climate policy beyond a renewable energy target that has less than two years to run. The risible Emissions Reduction Fund continues to dribble money to lucky business participants, but even the government itself no longer pretends that’s a credible policy, and cut off its funding.

    ______________________

    This is no new observation, others here on this blog and in the more sensible of the MSM have made the point clearly some time ago, but we are looking at a government in disarray. It is embarrassing that we have elected a group of people who have NFI.

    Abbott was bad, but this lot seem determined to make his tenure look like it was a good time.

    The present LNP need to be put out of their misery by a landslide to Labor at the next election. I suspect that many in the Government benches would be glad to have the charade over, and rebuild an electable party from the remnants of the soon-to-be opposition benches.

    For democracy to operate, we have to have a viable alternative to keep the bastards honest, and I include Labor in that. At the moment the LNP is not a viable alternative. They are a rabble. This is not in Australia’s best interests.

    I look forward to a Labor Government, but I also look forward to a LNP opposition which provides a brake to excesses by a Labor Government who will no doubt be far too cocky after their impending win, human nature being what it is. Luckily the senate looks likely to provide that brake in the meantime, given the likely make up of the senate.

  29. Rossmcg:

    You’re probably right. When in Malaysia we’d skip the inclusive hotel buffet breakfast and venture instead to a local Indian joint for a thali ‘breakfast’. Much better than hotel breakfast fare, and you wouldn’t need to eat until mid afternoon. 🙂

  30. The Esperanto Museum !(unfortunately I think it is now closed). It was run by a true aficionado who told me a little joke about the Australian accent when I visited in 2002

  33. My favourite breakfast from Turkey.

    Menemen, just pick it up with crusty bread perfectĂ :Đ

    ?w=1200&h=630&crop=1

  34. Zoidlord says:
    Friday, August 31, 2018 at 9:34 pm
    Melbourners will have 5 Million population size tomorrow.

    __________________

    Or today, or yesterday, MOE being what it is.

  35. Finally have some time to comment on things:

    I read https://www.smh.com.au/national/we-would-have-screamed-at-every-official-if-we-had-known-what-was-to-come-20180828-p5006m.html (thanks to those who posted this).

    My OH was watching me read it after work – he had already read it. I started to say this mirrored our experience – but he asked me to read to the end before we discussed it.

    A great tragedy that could have been prevented if proper psychiatric help was available. Australia has turned away from seeing psychiatric conditions as a medical problem, and now sees them as a moral problem.

    I have mentioned here before the difficulties we have had with my youngest son. Diagnosed on the Autism spectrum by 10 years old – and NO it was not Aspergers! A perfectly decent developmental paediatrician, who was amazingly supportive and helpful, explained that it was non-specific autism, probably arising from a combination of genes. He was also quite blunt that youngest son would find it hard to lead a “functional” life, but suggested that what I was doing – making sure he interacted with many people and had a variety of non-school educational experiences- was the right thing to do.

    I was also lucky to have as my family brain’s trust two aunts (Hello Aunty Mavis, aunts are amazing) who both were medicos. One in particular was a godsend. She was a development paediatrician (I only say was because at the age of 80 she has decided to finally retire). She trained in the UK in the early 1970s (not possible in Oz at the time?), and returned to Oz in the early 1980s. She eventually got an OAM, so she is pretty good.

    She helped me to cut through the bullshit, to understand what was wrong with my son – apparently she was watching all my kids early because she knew the family tendencies, and we now look like having a more positive outcome than I could ever have guessed. Son has just successfully completed a diploma in sound engineering. We are not out of the woods yet, but things are looking up. He transfers to the degree program next semester.

    I am also not too shabby at research, and although I am a researcher in hard sciences, I know how to use PubMed, and how to find terms I am unfamiliar with if needed. And, I have an excellent grasp of statistics. So, I can follow the latest research (not much) on what may be wrong with my son.

    However, who else in the community has this sort of support? And even with this support, we have had to undertake our own home ice detox program, putting both our lives in danger, and leaving out lovely terrace house with many holes punched in walls. We have been lucky, that we seem to have come through to the other side – although progress can easily be reversed.

    Australia need to get over its fundamentalist religion addiction and start seeing mental health and drug problems as what they are – genuine medical conditions, just like diabetes, that require a medical solution. This does not necessarily mean longterm medication (I am sure some of you will shout at me “but Big Pharma”), but a zero medication, 12-step program, and nothing else will work as well as the theosophists thinking that they could cure type I diabetes by healthy living and meditation.

    Luckily, in 1922, someone discovered insulin…

  37. Andrew_Earlwood, nath

    Now he was a proper political hater.

    Indeed. Just done a massive Sulla catch-up. Had only very vague knowledge of him before.

    self-made epitaph –

    “No friend ever served me, and no enemy ever wronged me, whom I have not repaid in full.”

  41. President Trump’s disapproval rating has hit a high point of 60 percent, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll that also finds that clear majorities of Americans support the special counsel’s Russia investigation and say the president should not fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

    At the dawn of the fall campaign sprint to the midterm elections, which will determine whether Democrats retake control of Congress, the poll finds a majority of the public has turned against Trump and is on guard against his efforts to influence the Justice Department and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s wide-ranging probe.

    Nearly half of Americans, 49 percent, say Congress should begin impeachment proceedings that could lead to Trump being removed from office, while 46 percent say Congress should not.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poll-60-percent-disapprove-of-trump-while-clear-majorities-back-mueller-and-sessions/2018/08/30/4cd32174-ac7c-11e8-a8d7-0f63ab8b1370_story.html?utm_term=.be1a1b123f0b

  43. Douglas and Milko

    Yes that story in The Age is traumatic. And your struggles remind me of people I know who have had incredibly distressing problems with mental health issues and substance abuse (for them or their children). The support you have had has obviously helped, and the struggles of those with no support (or with language, cultural and educational barriers) can be insurmountable.

    I am a great believer that all of these things will be eventually properly understood, and that their origins lie in genes and neurotransmitters.

    TB (consumption) was thought long ago to be caused by a ‘melancholy’ persona, and I think there was also a ‘starvation’ diet for type I diabetes – to prevent ketoacidosis but obviously ultimately self-defeating.

    All the best for your family’s well-being.

  45. Yeah, I always thought that queue jumping was a bad thing. A bit like the deficit.

    When the Australian private sector spends more on the rest of the world’s output than the rest of the world spends on ours, a federal government deficit equals a private sector surplus. What problem do you have with a private sector surplus?

  46. @Aunt Mavis

    I’ve never forgiven the the French for their capitulation. I had family die because of them. I count Pétain and his prime minister as war criminals. Stuff ‘Tartine au beurre’; please stop being prentious. No offence meant?

    I actually completely agree with you on this. My OH is French, but the family oscillated between Antibe in the south of France, and Noumea in New Caledonia. All loathe the Vichy regime with a passion.

    I spend a lot of time working in both Germany (Bonn, Rhineland) and France (Meudon and Marseille).

    The Germans in the Rhineland are pretty upfront about the horrors of WWII, and the part that Germany had to play.

    France is different – I think a younger generation is now angry and asking questions about what role France really played during WWII (mostly Vichy, allied to Nazi Germany). There is a new generation of literature exploring this collaboration, and the popular support that it had.

    On my way back from Vienna I went via France, to stay a day with my friend in Fontainebleau. In the train trip from CDG to Gare du Nord, we pass through a station called Drancy. I cannot go through that station without remembering that here was where the jews of Paris were stored after they were rounded up, by the milice (French police), before being shipped off to the death camps.

  47. phylactella
    Esperanto Museum in Atlas Obscura.
    https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/esperanto-museum
    Atlas Obscura is a great time-waster!

    Thanks for that, will now have to check this out whenever I am travelling anywhere! First thing I saw on Australia page was Ball’s Pyramid – a rock sticking out of the ocean out near Lord Howe Island. It reminded me of Ben Sandilands who ran the brilliant aviation blog “Plane Talking” on Crikey until he died last year. It was just the best go-to site for any aviation stuff, from new planes to air disasters, and there were fantastic expert contributors from the industry. Ben had been part of the support team to the group that first climbed Ball’s Pyramid in 1965. I had always been meaning to ask him to give a long recount of it on his blog, but never did.

    http://www.uq.edu.au/nuq/jack/Bryden.html

  49. “I am a great believer that all of these things will be eventually properly understood, and that their origins lie in genes and neurotransmitters.”
    I think it’s going to be way more complicated than that and I think it will require a paradigm shift and a far greater understanding of consciousness and how the mind works.

  50. If Morrison is in Indonesia, I hope he doesn’t lose his Australian Flag pin.

    I don’t think Austria wants to sign a free trade deal with Indonesia.

    My favorite breakfasts, would have to be Mexican.
    Breakfast burritos, omelettes, oh my!

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