Roughly six months out from a likely federal election, a gathering storm of preselection action. (Note also the thread below this one on the Victorian election campaign).
• Phillip Coorey of the Australian Financial Review reports Scott Morrison has sought to save Craig Kelly from a preselection defeat in Hughes, but that moderate backers of challenger Kent Johns are not to be deterred. According to a source identified as one of his conservative allies, Kelly “has been remiss in looking after his branches and would be lucky to have 25 per cent of the vote”. Quoth a moderate: “As far as the moderates are concerned, Malcolm Turnbull saved Concetta Fierravanti-Wells and Angus Taylor and Kelly last time, and look what they did to him.” Among the quandaries this raises are that Kelly may react to his defeat by moving to the cross-benches, further weakening the already shaky position of the government.
• There have been a few suggestions that Barnaby Joyce may fall foul of a new candidate-vetting process the Nationals have introduced, ostensibly to prevent further Section 44 mishaps. Figures in the party appear to have been putting it about that Joyce might face trouble due to the fear that even after the events of the past year, there remain “skeletons in the closet”. However, inquiries by Richard Ferguson of The Australian suggest that “a few members on the NSW Nationals’ 84-people-strong central council do plan to refuse to endorse Mr Joyce but they are in the minority”.
• David Johnston of the Border Mail reports nominees for a Liberal preselection vote for Indi, to be held on December 8, include Steve Martin, project manager for the Mars Petcare Wodonga plant expansion and Seeley International’s relocation from Albury to Wodonga, and Stephen Brooks, a local businessman. Another potential nominee is Greg Mirabella, husband of former member Sophie Mirabella. The seat’s independent member, Cathy McGowan, has not yet committed to seeking another term. The report also raises the possibility that Senator Bridget McKenzie, who is preparing to move her electorate office to Wodonga, might run for the Nationals.
• Christian Knight of the Nambucca Guardian reports the Nationals have preselected Patrick Conaghan, a local solicitor who was formerly a police officer and North Sydney councillor, to succeed the retiring Luke Hartsuyker in Cowper. The other candidates were Chris Genders, a newsagent; Jamie Harrison, former Port Macquarie-Hastings councillor and owner of an electrical business; and Judy Plunkett, a Port Macquarie pharmacist. Conaghan appears to have won over half the vote in the first round.
• Labor has recruited Brian Owler, neurosurgeon and former Australian Medical Association president, as its candidate for Bennelong. The party had initially preselected Lyndal Howison, communications manager at the Whitlam Institute and the party’s candidate in 2016, but she agreed to step aside for Owler.
• Gladys Liu, director of Blue Ribbon Consultancy, has been preselected as the Liberal candidate to succeed Julia Banks in Chisholm, having emerged “the clear winner in the field of eight candidates”, according to Liberal sources cited by Benjamin Preiss of The Age. Other candidates included Theo Zographos, a Monash councillor, and Litsa Pillios, an accountant. James Campbell of the Herald Sun reports Liu had backing from party president Michael Kroger and conservative powerbroker Michael Sukkar.
• David Alexander of the Pine Rivers Press reports the Liberal National Party has preselected local small businessman Terry Young as its candidate for Longman. The party recorded a portentously weak showing in the seat at the Super Saturday by-election on July 28, for which Young was an unsuccessful preselection candidate.
I thought left of centre people were in favour of open borders and free movement of people?
‘Late Riser says:
Saturday, November 17, 2018 at 3:19 pm
Any discussion on a Brexit agreement would seem moot without first resolving the issue of a divided Ireland.’
It is as moot as ever. May was not able to solve it.
And will remain moot. The May ‘solution’ – for the UK to stay in the customs union but without a say in the decision making – is driving the Brexiteers insane. Uh. Insanerer.
‘swamprat says:
Saturday, November 17, 2018 at 3:22 pm
Boerwar
There has been no increase in race hate events in Scotland. The increases are reported in England and Wales.’
The Glasgow kiss is bestowed without fear or favour?
Reported to be Some of the effects of Brexit, already:
https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2018/11/13/brexit-farce-in-detail/
BeetRooter will be with us for another 3 years..
National Party members met inside the Uralla Showground Pavilion on Saturday morning to select Barnaby Joyce as their candidate for New England in the coming Federal Election expected early next year.
About 150 of the party faithful turned up to have their votes recorded at the meeting. Although Mr Joyce was pre-selected unopposed, he said it was a huge relief and that he was very humbled by it.
Mr Joyce said he took the pre-selection process very seriously and thought each one was important; so much so that it took him a number of days to decide what he was going to say to the meeting.
https://www.armidaleexpress.com.au/story/5763108/nats-stick-with-barnaby-joyce-as-their-new-england-candidate/?cs=471
zoomster says:
More liked by the plutocrat classes that ‘own’ the governments. All that lovely exploitable labour that can be imported .
On the matter of how undemocratic the UK’s Houses of Lords is:
Population of New South Wales — 7.5+ million for 12 Senators.
Population of Tasmania — 0.5+ million for 12 Senators.
Population of A.C.T. — 0.5+ million for 2 Senators.
Population of N.T.: 0.25 million for 2 Senators.
What’s makes this curiouser still is Australia’s choosing such an undemocratic model a century after its deleterious impact upon America’s legislative processes was abundantly clear. New Zealand, of course, has no upper house.
It says in that article that the UK Government has 7,000 civil servants working on Brexit and Treasury has a budget for 9,000 more!!
Boerwar @ #651 Saturday, November 17th, 2018 – 2:27 pm
May found a way to Brexit with what in her mind is the minimum overall pain. (Still pain, mind you.) Since this is apparently unacceptable by watching what unfolds now we will eventually learn what really drove the Brexit decision, when one point of pain is minimised at the expense of the others.
Maybe they can convince Ireland to Irexit? Or Northern Ireland to leave the UK? So that maybe Northern Ireland and Ireland could reunify? Or put a hard border across the Irish Sea?
Never mind.
swamprat
We can safely assume that the bellacaledonia items are just the start of the Mayhem.
Boerwar,
The two large ferries to carry lorries directly between Europe (France) and Ireland to allow by-passing UK customs are interesting.
swamprat
A quick look at the list and i reckon a lot of them are just moving their tax avoidance HQ.
Sorry it is the 600 truck “Brexit Buster” ferry to be operating between Belgium and Ireland and Spain and Ireland.
In my opinion something as substantial as EU membership, or secession in general, should not be decided by a single vote. Of course, Cameron was the idiot who set it all in motion and he failed to set up a proper process to begin with.
It is, of course, entirely legitimate for the Brits, or anyone else, to vote to take themselves out of any union that they feel like.
But the process was a farce.
At the minimum it should initially have been an indicative plebiscite, which if passed would start the process of nailing down exactly what Brexit would entail before a binding referendum with all the grisly details well understood.
Or, in basic terms “do you want to leave the EU?”; ok, here are the details; “NOW are you really really REALLY sure now that the details have been thrashed out?”
One, fairly close, uninformed vote doesn’t cut it for something of this significance.
Of course changing the (bogus, non-existent, thanks Cameron!) rules of the game now is fraught, although a public vote on May’s proposed deal doesn’t seem flagrantly undemocratic to me.
Poroti
Wouldn’t taxes likely to be lower in the new brexited Tory UK than in Europe.
Jackol @ #664 Saturday, November 17th, 2018 – 3:53 pm
You could say the same about the US presidential election 🙁
swamprat
They prefer not paying tax rather than worrying about rate differentials. The City of London is a great place for them Perhaps leaving the EU makes it not so great and so off to the likes of Luxembourg and Malta for them.
.
The 12 Most Lucrative Tax Havens in the World
……….a reputation for being tax shelters. Luxembourg’s tax-haven status comes from its business-friendly laws that allow international companies to park portions of their business in the nation and dodge billions in tax bills. Tax-friendly characteristics include tax incentives, zero percent withholding taxes and evidence of large-scale profit shifting, according to Oxfam.
http://fortune.com/2017/02/22/world-best-tax-havens-countries-corporate-business/
This would terrify some Australian politicians.
Scotland is to become the first country in the world to embed LGBTIQ rights in the school curriculum…. There will be no exemptions or opt-outs to the policy.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/nov/09/scotland-first-country-approve-lgbti-school-lessons
Poroti,
OK.
Some of those businesses were moving to Fance, Germany and Ireland. I know Ireland is low tax.
So much of the language surrounding Brexit seems to have two sides, Britain and Europe. I have to ask any Tasmanians on the blog at the moment if they feel Tasmania is somehow distinct from Australia? By which I don’t mean, is Tasmania distinct from Victoria, or SA, or NSW, or Queensland, or WA, or NT, or ACT. I suspect the Brits (as a group) are fiercely and stubbornly nationalistic and that is the reason for Brexit. I suspect the EU by itself is seen as an invasion, making immigration merely the easiest symbol.
swamprat @ #668 Saturday, November 17th, 2018 – 4:11 pm
Does this mean we have to have another plebiscite? 🙁
P1 at 4.01
You could say the same about the US presidential election
____________________________________
But there is a 4 yearly general review system built in.
swamprat
I saw a few Luxembourgs and at least 1 Malta.
TPOF @ #672 Saturday, November 17th, 2018 – 4:18 pm
I’m not sure the US is going to last that long with Trump as President 🙁
‘Swamprat says:
Saturday, November 17, 2018 at 3:57 pm
Poroti
Wouldn’t taxes likely to be lower in the new brexited Tory UK than in Europe.’
Not when Corbyn gets in. This is just the start of the capital panic flight.
Late Riser,
My partner, who resided in Tasmania for over a decade, tells me they were more overt in expressing their patriotic emotions about Australia than she had experienced in Sydney.
Well, as I pointed out in my post last hour, Tasmanian voters are 15 times more powerful than NSW voters, so they indubitably have significant motivation to feel 15 times more patriotically Australian than, say, mere Wollongong folks like us.
Late Riser
You are right many (most) of the brexiteers are “British” nationalists.
British Nationalists are largely (but not entirely) English.
Scottish Nationalists are overwhelmingly (but not entirely) pro-Europe.
In NI the division is between Irish and British nationalists.
Politics in Scotland has been diverging from politics in England for some dacades over more than nationalism.
The London dominated business neo-liberal austerity of the Tories (and the Labour Party) is not supported in Scotland. The SNP is the largest Party because it tries to introduce policies to ameliarate the impacts of austerity as much as it can. Its policies tend to be more “evidence-based”. It sees itself as a social-democratic party of the centre left. This stance has a lot of support in Scotland.
Excuse me a moment if I change the subject. Goodbye Swift Parrots. RFA agreements have been a disaster ever since they were introduced.
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/a-disaster-forest-deals-reignite-tension-between-loggers-and-conservationists-20181116-p50gfq.html
Posted without comment:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/nov/17/stink-hits-darts-grand-slam-as-match-features-flatulent-end
lizzie
We had a guest speaker from LEAN (Labor Environmental Action Network). Their contention is that the current laws are aimed at making sure projects go ahead rather than protecting the environment.
They have spent considerable efforts in ensuring that that will change under a Labor government – it should be one of the big policy decisions to come out of the Federal Conference.
…I should clarify – the Environmental Protection Acts.
Player One @ #674 Saturday, November 17th, 2018 – 4:23 pm
As Bon Jovi once said re the end of Trump, “We’re half way there. Living on a prayer”!
Dan Gulberry
Those darts players have a race horse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow3iWmcTX-Y
zoomster
I’ve been very disappointed in Vic Labor over the environment, but if Fed Labor can “step up” we may see something change. I hope so.
Should Scotland become independent?
Should Northern Ireland become independent, merge with the Republic of Ireland, or remain within the UK?
Scottish independence with Scotland issuing its own currency, enforcing taxes in that currency, and floating the currency on foreign exchange markets would be a very good thing. Then Scotland would have the fiscal flexibility to achieve full employment in a manner that is consistent with price stability, environmental sustainability, and the Scottish people’s preferred scale of public services. The problem for Scotland at the moment is that they merely use a currency that is controlled by a different government (the UK government) that is pursuing a needlessly contractionary fiscal policy. It’s true that Scotland is getting net transfers of output from the rest of the UK but it would be a lot better off if it had the power to mobilise all idle labour into socially valuable purposes. Obviously it cannot do that while it is a currency user rather than a currency issuer. It would be pointless for them to leave the UK but keep using the UK pound or adopt the Euro. In either case, they face all the limitations of being a currency user. They would be independent in name only.
Northern Ireland has a lower productivity level than Scotland, so if they became independent and issued their own currency they would have a lot of work to do to lift their productivity level and hedge against exchange rate effects. They would need to reduce their dependence on imports of essential goods (especially energy and food), and it may not be realistic for them to do that. So my guess is that Northern Ireland’s living standards depend on it being part of a larger political community. The UK has a much larger productive capacity than the Republic of Ireland, and can therefore provide Northern Ireland with larger net transfers of output than the Republic of Ireland could. An additional limit on Ireland is that it is merely a currency user (it uses the Euro), so it lacks the fiscal policy flexibility of the UK. Northern Ireland’s best bet is to stay within the UK and to get a soft border with Ireland.
Ultimately the best way forward for the Eurozone is to dissolve the thing. It never made sense in the first place because the economic conditions, languages, cultures, and histories are so different that there is no possibility of creating a shared central fiscal authority that can target spending where it is most needed. In a federation such as Australia or the USA there is a sufficient common identity for people to see it as legitimate for a central government to transfer more output to the less productive parts of the currency area. The EU lacks that attribute, which is why Germans hate the idea of helping Greece (even though the bailout was more about helping reckless German and French banks than helping Greek people).
The peculiar difficulty for the EU haters is to explain why it has been so hugely successful.
Invariably their response is not to look at the facts.
The response is to tout some Golden Era… if only…
Have a look at the funding transfers to NI and Scotland:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/23/uk-budget-deficit-grows-to-more-than-10bn-as-people-spend-less
Lateriser, Im Tasmanian…..find your question quite odd. Im Tasmanian and Australian
‘lizzie says:
Saturday, November 17, 2018 at 4:37 pm
Excuse me a moment if I change the subject. Goodbye Swift Parrots. ‘
The artificial Glider-excluding nest hollows are making a large difference in breeding success. It would be difficult to link the Tasmanian RFA to Sugar Glider predation of Swift Parrot nests.
Nicholas
The Scottish Government is setting up a State owned Scottish National Investment Bank (SNIB) next year.
MMT agrees for Scotland to have its own currency.
https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2018/06/07/why-scotland-should-reject-the-sterlingisation-option-and-instead-create-its-own-currency/
Rocket Rocket asks me, several pages ago “Do you think [Ruddick] really believes that bit about [a conservative-dominant Liberal Party] dominating the 21st century?”. I have little choice. But I don’t understand what’s going on in their heads.
In America, where they’ve manage to rewrite the rules almost entirely in their favor, they are merely one of two competitive parties, nationally. They do dominate many states but they’re in flux. And the rules in America are more clearly in their favor.
In Australia, it’s clear the rules are not in their favor. The rules have all been written in favor of competing in the centre. Compulsory voting. Preferential and proportional voting. Separated federal and state elections. A small country with fewer but relatively larger centres. No laws entrenching the big two parties.
How can they possibly expect to go off to ideologysville and win? Did they check the bus timetable when they left? I doubt they can even go there and survive!
Boerwar
But presumably the lack of flowering trees does make a difference.
swamprat
The problem with MMT is that it is incapable of resolving a couple of issues. One is inflation. The other is the nexus between what happens in a domestic economy and what happens in the trade-exposed economy. The third is the classic dead end of top-down GOSplanning.
Maduro’s Venezuela is a classic case where printing your own money simply does not work.
Of course you don’t go bankrupt. You keep printing money that nobody will take seriously.
But the outcome is exactly the same.
SCOUT @ #687 Saturday, November 17th, 2018 – 4:04 pm
That’s sort of what I expected to hear. Thank you for straw poll confirming my gut. (Also thank you to Prof. Higgins’ partner.) If this more generally the case, the question then is why do the majority of Brits not think of themselves as being both British and European?
‘lizzie says:
Saturday, November 17, 2018 at 5:09 pm
Boerwar
But presumably the lack of flowering trees does make a difference.’
It might if there were enough Swifties not being eaten by gliders.
IMO, it would be fair to say that we do know the glider link for sure but we don’t really know the flowering tree link being a critical limiting factor.
One problem is that the Tassie environmentalists have a history of not arguing from a base of statistical science.
The Senate is the States house (amended to give representation to the Territories, which was once not the case).
Given the populations of NSW and Victoria therefore the numbers they return to the Lower House the less populous States have equal representation in the Senate, so can caucus in the interests of those less populous States.
Hence NSW and Victoria can not just ram thru legislation which is detrimental to the lesser populated States or a number of the lesser populated States
Hence Senators appointed other than at an election are appointed by the State governments, not by-elections as is the case with the Lower House
On another subject:-
It appears that (even) Murdoch saying Federal authorities who had cancelled a Passport for the reasons they did and had not so advised State authorities (so State authorities and the Courts in that State unaware) sees the Conservatives and their “terrorist, law and order” agenda in abject ruin.
I do not know if any protocols have since been put in place, but I expressed and still express anger that a young child in Australia could (can?) be hawked around in different States with allegations of sexual abuse by a father being made and those jurisdictions then say they were unaware of the allegations being made and the child being interrogated elsewhere (a 9 year old child).
“We were unaware ……”
It appears nothing has changed.
It is time that the carriage of law and order in Australia have an overarching authority under the control of a panel of Judges appointed by the High Court – such that these issues are beyond politicking and the responsibility is not with political appointments and subject to demarcations resulting in “We were unaware …….”
That has always been my position courtesy of my experiences and knowledge of the fragmentation of Law and Order across the Nation and its boundaries.
It is a disgrace and has been for a very long time
Then the authorities just want to bury the issue – because it impacts on their carefully constructed and precious (to them) reputation.
Boerwar
I do not understand the dismal theories of economics. That article i referred to happened to be by a MMT economist. It’s Greek to me 🙂
LR and Scout
Tasmanians start from a bit of cringe vis-a-vis the mainland while the Brits start from a bit of arrogant superiority vis-a-vis the mainland?
Some contributors have suggested the point of the plebiscite is to find out what kind of model we want, so we don’t go off to tall the trouble of creating a model in some constitutional convention, and then reject it because it’s a silly one.
For that approach, approval voting, rather than preferential voting, is required. You tick yes to any model you will support. You tick no to any model you will oppose.
It still doesn’t guarantee support — for instance, we might discover that smaller-minded states won’t accept an unweighted popular vote but won’t some kind of electoral college. Or we might discover that everyone says “just give them the voice already, then we can discuss your symbolism”.
And it might be that we find it impossible to get a direct election model through parliament.
(Incidentally, if I was going to do anything creative, like making Harry our king, I’d make the heir and successor of the Queen in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland for the purposes of Australian law a body consisting of all former governors and governors-general and appropriate Indigenous leaders, operating by majority rules of those present when convened by a premier, PM or viceroy. Then we can just skip the referendum and be the only country with a corporation as its monarch.)
Tasmanian and Victorian conservationists and researchers have been doing well with the orange bellied parrot. Maybe the Swift parrot needs similar publicity and actions.