We’re in an off-week for federal opinion polling, although we may get geographic and demographic breakdowns from Newspoll – the leadership change had broken up their usual schedule of quarterly publication, and they have already published the results from the end of the Turnbull epoch. So here’s a summary of preselection news. Note the post below on the Wentworth by-election, and the one below that on the US mid-terms, courtesy of Adrian Beaumont.
• After successful lobbying from Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton and Mathias Cormann, Richard Colbeck will head the Tasmanian Liberal Senate ticket. Earlier reports indicated he would again be dumped, as he was in 2016 – initially costing him his seat, before he won it back on the countback that resulted from Stephen Parry’s Section 44-related disqualification. Claire Chandler, a conservative backed by Eric Abetz, is number two, with Hobart councillor Tanya Denison number three. The presence of two women on the ticket makes a change from the usual form of the state party, which last had a woman in federal parliament in 2002. Those who missed out included Brett Whiteley, who held Braddon from 2013 to 2016 and failed to win it back in the Super Saturday by-election, and Wendy Summers, political staffer and the sister of David Bushby.
• Tasmanian Labor, on the other hand, has persisted in dumping Senator Lisa Singh to number four, despite her historic success in having below-the-line voters overturn her demotion in 2016. This reflects the party’s persistence in favouring the claim of John Short, state secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, who will be number three. The top two positions go to incumbents of the Left and Right, Carol Brown and Catryna Bilyk.
• Ann Sudmalis’s retirement in the dicey New South Wales seat of Gilmore leaves in the field her prospective preselection challenger, Grant Schultz, a real estate agent and the son of former Hume MP Alby Schultz. However, Mark Kenny of Fairfax reports “the moderate faction of the Liberal Party believes it can retain its hold on the seat and find a replacement for Ms Sudmalis”.
• Chris O’Keefe of Nine News reports Hughes MP Craig Kelly has been approached to run in the marginal state seat of East Hills, to smooth over his likely preselection defeat in his existing seat at the hands of Kent Johns. Kelly appeared to scupper his chances when he suggested forgiving Russia for the MH17 disaster was “the price we have to pay” for “good relations going forward”.
• Perin Davey, a Riverina water policy specialist, has won preselection to succeed the retiring John “Wacka” Williams as the Nationals’ New South Wales Senate candidate. The existing coalition agreement gives the Nationals the difficult third position on the ticket, but Joe Kelly of The Australian reports the party is considering breaking away to run its own ticket. To this end it has chosen a full slate of four candidates, rounded out by “small business owner Sam Farraway, Gunnedah Mayor Jamie Chaffey and Wagga-based farmer Paul Cocking”.
• Skye Kakoschke-Moore has been confirmed as the lead South Australian Senate candidate for the Centre Alliance, confirming that Nick Xenophon will stand by the pledge he made at the time of his failed run for state parliament that he would not run at the federal election.
Put me down for 99.99999/0.00001 ALP-LNP TPP. The 0.00001 is Lara Bingle. She still owes ScoMo for kickstarting her career.
Rocket Rocket
Great timing re that article and the guy from Tassie. I’d just seen this from the Sloane Ranger.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/judith-sloan/whingeing-tasmanians-you-never-had-it-so-good/news-story/36d6f1905ed02c7a9aa07eaf4a2473f2
Is anyone here following the Brazil election – this Sunday for President and Congress.
The right-wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro (Partido Social Liberal = Social Liberal Party) will certainly make a run-off election, and looks likely to win such a run-off at this stage.
He recently praised the Brazil Military Dictatorship which ran the country from 1964-1985. A few months ago I heard a long program I think on the BBC about Tancredo Neves who was elected in the 1985 election which ended the dictatorship. He was very ill at the time, but put off any treatment because he thought it would risk democracy not being reinstated. He died before he was able to be sworn in as President, but a later act of Congress officially recognized him as President.
I am very concerned about Jair Bolsonaro and what may happen if he wins. Brazil has not had good Presidents lately.
lol at comparing St Pat’s at Strathfield to elite private schools.
poroti
Words fail me. Off to a meeting.
PS: In looking up where all those pollies went to school, I only just picked up that Michael McCormack must be yet another Catholic. Gee there have been a lot of Catholics in the upper echelons of conservative politics in recent years: Abbott, Hockey, Turnbull (a convert), Pyne, Joyce, McCormack. Further back, Brendan Nelson and Tim Fischer. And many more at both State and Federal levels.
Rudd and Shorten, on the other hand, were Catholic boys who converted to the protty side: presumably for the same reason that Turnbull took the opposite path (marriage).
Business Insider AUS
Verified account @BIAUS
49s49 seconds ago
Australian new home sales haven’t been this weak in years
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/australia-new-home-sales-multi-year-low-gdp-construction-outlook-2018-10
Re Paul Keating’s school education, he grew up in Bankstown (then as now an unfashionable Sydney suburb). He attended the local Catholic school, like most Catholic kids of that era. These schools charged very low fees and often had 50-60 in a class. Not exactly a posh private school. He left school at 15. This was typical for the era – 1959 – when most kids left school after completing the Intermediate Certificate (year 9) and got a job or an apprenticeship.
Burgey: “lol at comparing St Pat’s at Strathfield to elite private schools.” I think it’s more elite than OLMC Heidelberg.
The Australian posts Peter Van Onselen talking about the power of lobbying.
Rupert is getting desperate.
Political party fundraising means that people and organisations with the funds to do so get access to power most citizens don’t, writes @vanOnselenP. But are they also buying influence? https://trib.al/4SCPx27 #auspol
Yep. Agreed
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/10/03/the-news-this-week-confirms-it-donald-trump-is-the-worst-person-ever-to-be-president/?__twitter_impression=true
meher baba
Surprised you are familiar with a local Melbourne Catholic school
This has more holes than Swiss cheese.
Why would you ask him to resign if you have decided to have an investigation into the claims against him?
I suspect some major arse covering here! 🙂
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/oct/04/abc-board-says-it-called-for-justin-milne-investigation-night-before-guthrie-sacked
Re predicting the next Newspoll, whenever it is, I’m picking 52-48 for Labor. Morrison has had quite a good couple of weeks IMO. Labor is having to readjust its approach from attacking Turnbull by proxy through taxation policies directed at the “big end of town” towards an approach that features expenditure measures targeting women and young families. They’re going about it quite well, but I reckon it will take a few more weeks to take full effect.
I am off to the shops now, but I’ll check in tonight and hopefully catch up on Newspoll guesses then.
At the moment we have this.
PB mean: ALP 56.2 to 43.8 LNP
PB median: ALP 53.0 to 47.0 LNP
No. Of PB Respondents: 31
And if the Newspoll is postponed, oh well, I’ll accept revisions for the next one. And we’ll always have what might have been.
KayJay @ #1452 Thursday, October 4th, 2018 – 6:19 am
You heard it from the Bludgers weeks ago that it wouldn’t take long for the poorly thought through simplistic fix to the GST to blow up in ScoMo’s face. Is there anyone competent at L/NP HQ directing these things?
St Pat’s Strathfield is an iconic school, the hallmark of which is a stunning diversity of thought through stories that enrich our lives.
Victoria: “Surprised you are familiar with a local Melbourne Catholic school.”
I once went out for a short time with an alumnus of Star of the Sea in Brighton, which sounded like a slightly better than average Catholic school. Reading about it online, OLMC sounded vaguely similar.
They didn’t – they wanted him to step aside for during the government “investigation”, but he decided he’d rather resign. Allegedly after pressure from the government.
I look forward to the Australian version with Pastor Fozzie Bear 🙂
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/03/the-trump-prophecy-film-god-election-mark-taylor
Another reminder.
The wealthy right is represented by Silicon Valley.
The same thinking as the voters of Wentworth.
Thats why they can support progressive social causes like Marriage Equality Asylum Seekers and Climate Change. World’s biggest corporation Apple best example of this.
Hollywood also thinks like this.
The fact is that the right has lost the culture wars and is now fighting to retain some straws to prevent that social change but in the sweep of history they are losing.
Just like communism was destroyed to the point a communist government like China has had to embrace capitalism even though its still not embraced democracy. The good thing for them is they don’t have to embrace the market rules everything and so have more control over the social agenda.
How these different forces will wash up in the long term is still out but the forces of change are there and cannot be denied. Not even by China.
In this country that means that expect more “left wing” wins in the social space putting pressure on for more regulation not less of the market.
NBC Breaking News tweets
U.S. Senate Majority Leader McConnell files motion to continue the confirmation process for Judge Kavanaugh, setting up debate, followed by weekend voting on the nomination. https://nbcnews.to/2Rp64lJ – @NBCPolitics
Well, he would do that, wouldn’t he?
Late Riser says:
Thursday, October 4, 2018 at 11:29 am
briefly @ #1570 Thursday, October 4th, 2018 – 11:03 am
We need to try to shape the future.
I agree there is a need.
Perhaps I am unduly pessimistic this morning.
Me too. Lately I’ve had reasons to describe us as institutionally lazy, greedy, corrupt and dishonest. I think this is, on the whole, generous. We are rooted unless we change.
ABC breaking news
Racism on the Work for the Dole regime in remote areas.
More penalties if you are Indigenous.
Wikipedia needs donations — if you use it regularly, make sure you support it!
https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LandingPage&country=AU&uselang=en&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sp57487616&utm_campaign=C1819_Email1&appeal=Appeal-JimmyQuote&hpc=15.21&contact_id=18024883&link_id=4
…but keeps the person’s name secret.
Dodgy as.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-04/abc-board-appoints-independent-adviser-for-investigation/10337470
Guytaur
McConnell is an evil snake
Victoria
It has not happened as far as I know. However by his actions McConnell has been working for Russia for a while would not come as a surprise Eg Stacking Supreme Court.
That was the first shot in delegitimising US institutional norms.
This was interesting. Considering our fed govt are Republican wannabes
——–
Pete EVANS
Pete EVANS
@911CORLEBRA777
·
1h
BOOM
Australia has officially blamed Russia for attacking the 2016 United States Presidential Election. THE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT HAS SPECIFICALLY SAID THAT THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT WAS TARGETING HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON’S CANDIDACY
In answer to all of this…
Neither I, nor any of the above, are senior ABC on-air political commentators.
Good to see Tim Murray getting some press and going hard on climate, emissions, and renewables. That’s where his best chance lies – the future of Wentworth’s little darlings.
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/best-way-labor-s-wentworth-candidate-tim-murray-backs-carbon-price-20181003-p507jq.html
It seems appropriate to post this now. Uk experience same here?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/17/bbc-leftwing-bias-non-existent-myth
guytaur @ #1722 Thursday, October 4th, 2018 – 12:06 pm
From what I read, it’s a massive attempt at bluffing his way through the vote and out the other side with Kavanaugh. There’s still the 3 wavering Republican Senators-Murkowski, Collins and Flake, plus the 2 Blue Dog Dems, Manchin and Heitdkamp, who haven’t made their intentions clear yet and that’s enough to swing it against Kavanaugh. However, as is often pointed out, for the ones that are sticking around they have to balance their decision against the fact that, if they vote down Kavanaugh, the Trump team will put one of their cult members up against them and as they come from States that voted for Trump they have to make a calculation as to whether those voters will support their decision or be fired up by their support of Trump to vote against them. Talk about being on the horns of a dilemma!
Andrew,
I’ve taken the Heathrow to London tube many times and its a dog. It gets you there, but its way too slow. Its soon to be replaced with a much faster Crossrail (Elizabeth line) service.
Sydney trains typically average 50Km/hr average including stops and I might add that that is a little generous. For an example Liverpool to Parramatta (T5 is about 16Km by track yet it takes 25 minutes. That’s an average speed of 38Km/hr. That’s a track that for the most part has geometry that would support 130Km/hr trains. The real problem is the complexity of the system and logical sectors sharing physical track pairs. (Sydney Metro is in part addressing this by taking the Bankstown line out of the city circle).
In any case, an average speed of 50-80Km/hr is ok on relatively short journeys. Say 10-15Km. Its not what you should aim for once you get to (say) CBD to Parramatta. And let me make it quite clear. An hour between BC airport and the CBD permanently renders BC airport as a non-competitor to KS. We need competition and a few billion spent on this renders economic benefits many times greater.
Not to mince words, a medium fast train is a cruel hoax. I’ve sat down and talked with the engineers responsible for these lines, pored over the data. Actually gone on field trips and eyeballed sections of rail line between Newcastle and Canberra.
It boils down to this. Between Newcastle and Sydney there is one section of rail line that with minor improvements would support a 160Km/hr class train. That’s the one between Morisset and Lisarow. The rest of the Newcastle to Sydney rail line is beyond redemption. The situation between Campbelltown and Canberra is more complex. About 20 percent of that rail line could be upgraded to 160-200Km/hr standard and maybe another 30 percent could be consistently used at 130Km/hr. This is with tilt technology. Beyond that you start paying for new alignment and it quickly goes into the “good money thrown after bad” territory. If you like I can walk you through it section by section.
Even to reliably run a tilt train over the Sydney to Canberra route, without tinkering too much with the alignment means hundreds of millions spend on really basic stuff. Drainage. Fixing bridges. New sleepers. Track conditioning. Thing is tilt trains are even more sensitive to poor track condition and most of the track as it stands is poor. Add to that the fact that you still need to share track with freight and freight regularly de-aligns the track and you’re in a world of woe.
The reality here is a MFT train will cut the current 4hr 16m trip from Central to Canberra down to about 3 hours, give or take. Then you have to consider the fact that the train gets you from Central to Kingston (Canberra station), NOT from door to door. So a 3 hour train trip is not competitive. 2 hours is more like it given the wide distribution of end points and the need to get to/from a station at either end. Now a 2 hour train trip is absolutely NOT possible without replacing most of the current alignment with new track.
Its the same with Newcastle to Sydney. Its a cruel hoax. Rather than dealing with the problem which is how to convince decision makers that high speed rail is money well spent, we instead have learned helplessness kicking in. All we can ever invest is a few hundred million here and there. It just will not work. For instance, TfNSw has some old timers pushing a faster rail concept from Gosford to Sydney. I’ve been through their documents, public and not so public. What they are proposing is to spend $3 billion or so on new tunnels, to gain 20 minutes on the schedule. This can’t be sneezed at, but where do you get your value from? This will not compete with car travel except in the margins. In the meantime the RMS will continue to push to spend billions on extending the M9 to the Central Coast. Its a failure. What it does is create a large percentage change (of patronage) on a low base. Yes more people will use the train, but most people will still continue to use a car. All this extra patronage represents less than a hundred million net present value. There’s no way in hell this can pay for the cost of what is an expensive band aid.
We need to forget this nonsense and go back to the question, where does high speed rail represent the most value? The answer is high speed rail that actually competes with car travel over 10s to 100s of Km. To do this means doing it properly. Not wasting money on toys.
I for one have been interested in the back and forth on Badgery’s Creek over the past couple of days. Interesting to read what other think.
Cat
On the politics I agree it’s a bluff. The comments from Flake and the other GOP people attacking Trump for his attack on Forde at his rally are an ominous sign for Kavanaugh being confirmed.
Rushing it might just be McConnell trying to say to Trump: See I did all I could.
Edit: I agree regarding Horns of dilemma for those Senators. Unless they put country first.
“And we’ll always have what might have been.”
Like Paris?? 🙂
Not if the RWFW’s have their way. 🙁
St Patrick’s 11A soccer team last year was elite.
My son’s team barely touched the ball.
In my day St Patrick’s was associated with massive over grown rugby players. In fact some of the speech welcoming Justin Fabian Gleeson to the NSW Court of Appeal was dedicated to his reputation as an enforcer on the rugby field.
http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/man-jailed-for-poisoning-hundreds-of-eagles/10304368
‘How low can he go?’: Conservative writer Max Boot dismayed at Trump’s latest attack on Dr. Ford
Conservative writer Max Boot is often outspoken about his disdain for President Donald Trump, and even for him, Trump’s latest actions have proven to reach a new low.
“It is too early to conclude that Donald Trump is the worst president ever. But it’s not too early to conclude that he is the worst person ever to be president,” The Washington Post columnist writes.
“These Terrible Tuesday news items confirm what we already know about Trump: that he is a liar, a cheat and a bully without an ounce of dignity, empathy or decency. In place of his soul, he has a black hole. The only way he can make himself feel better — to fill the emptiness inside — is to abuse those weaker than himself. He is a monster,” Boot said.
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/10/how-low-can-he-go-conservative-writer-max-boot-disturbed-at-trumps-latest-attack-on-dr-ford/
C@tmomma @ #1634 Thursday, October 4th, 2018 – 12:26 pm
I’m confused as to why analysts keep treating those two as being in-play (as possibly blocking Kavanaugh). The GOP doesn’t need them to confirm Kavanaugh, it has enough numbers among its own party members.
If they’re in play as undecideds, that only benefits the Republicans.
Late Riser put me down for 53/47. There’s no objective factors involved. Its just the lizard brains getting over the shock and things returning to normal.
ar
Blue Dog Democrats being reported as in play shows that Trump does not have the numbers yet for confirmation from his own party alone.
Personally if the GOP Senators are not voting for confirmation I don’t see the Blue Dogs doing so.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2018/oct/04/ceos-should-reveal-how-much-more-they-earn-than-their-average-worker?CMP=share_btn_tw
Not if he thought he couldnt torture a yes from either the wavering Republicans or the up for election Trump state Democrats.
He isnt bluffing at all. He just knows that moral fibre in congress has become mere lint to be brushed away rather than the fabric that holds democracy and society together.
Never underestimate the shallowness and stupidity of the average voter. The amygdala rules.
C@tmomma,
Yet again, your reading of the Kavanaugh confirmation dilemma is spot on.
I remain pessimistic about the possibility that either or both of the Democratic Party Senators don’t have the courage to sacrifice their cushy Senate seats. They are likely to go along with those Republicans like Susan Collins who are egregiously deluding themselves with Kavanaugh’s mendacity that Roe vs Wade is “settled”, when overturning it is obviously the Republican Senators’ Holy Grail.
Doubtless, Trump doesn’t care a quark whether some states make abortion illegal because Kavanaugh is his fanboy who’s going to keep Trump free from any sort of prosecution until he resigns and Veep Pence hands him the Nixonesque blanket pardon for all past crimes.
Then it will be up to New York State’s Attorney General to pursue Trump assiduously for tax law indictments, which will be a long and winding road which leads to who knows where.
Late Riser, put me down for 53/47. The lizard brains are getting over the shock and things are returning to baseline.
a r @ #1742 Thursday, October 4th, 2018 – 12:50 pm
Because they have been caucasing with Flake, Collins and Murkowski. Of course, it is true to say that on the raw numbers side of things their votes are unimportant, but, in so far as they are trying to triangulate their response to enable them to be elected again in the mid-terms PLUS get the 3 Republican Senators over to their side, it becomes important to know how they will also vote.