Departure lounge

The retirement of another senior Liberal in a loseable seat, and a poll suggesting Labor could pull off a boilover in Higgins.

The West Australian today reports that Human Services Minister Michael Keenan will be joining the exodus at the election, creating a vacancy in his northern suburbs Perth seat of Stirling. The seat was long highly marginal, but Keenan has held it on mostly comfortable margins since he gained the seat from Labor in 2004.

There is also a uComms/ReachTEL poll in The Australian from the scene of the week’s other big retirement announcements, the Melbourne seat of Higgins. Conducted on Thursday from a sample of 860 for interests who wish to bring about the return of Peter Costello, the poll finds Labor with a two-party lead of 52-48. This compares with a 10.7% margin for retiring Liberal member Kelly O’Dwyer in Liberals-versus-Labor terms, although it’s perfectly in line with how the electorate voted at the election. It was in fact the Greens who finished second in 2016, but the poll suggests that is unlikely to be repeated this time: after exclusion of the 8.4% undecided, the primary votes are Liberal 40.3%, Labor 27.1% and Greens 19.3%.

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.

1,544 comments on “Departure lounge”

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  2. Darn 1027

    Interesting suggestion. I think this year the accidental ‘decoupling’ of January 26th and the public holiday on January 28th has somewhat dampened the usual right wing hysteria.

    The dawn service in Melbourne at the King’s domain Keeping Place was also a great initiative.

  3. L.R.

    I know nothing about Erin Watson-Lynn apart from what I read in Upnorth’s post @1.43 am today, which is why I described it as my fantasy. Sorry.

  4. Thanks lizzie, I used outline to avoid the pictures that I suspect are there too. “Loved-up” was all the warning I needed. 🙂

  5. ………there was a deliberate, coordinated attempt by top Trump campaign officials to influence the 2016 election

    😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆
    OMG , campaign officials trying to influence voters !! When did this start happening ?

  6. Steggal chose a great location to hold a presser. Too early to write-off Abbott but he’s going to have his hands full holding Warringah, denying him the ability to campaign elsewhere, eg, Dickson.

  9. Mavis Smith says: Sunday, January 27, 2019 at 11:05 am

    phoenixRED:

    [“The indictment of Roger Stone makes clear that there was a deliberate, coordinated attempt by top Trump campaign officials to influence the 2016 election and subvert the will of the American people.”]

    In the indictment against Stone, Mueller refers to a top official but doesn’t name him/her, one possible inference is that it is Trump himself.

    *************************************************

    Hi Mavis – Lots of speculation over who is unnamed – Bannon, Don Jr, Kushner ?????? …… It has been said that Trump has to OK everything personally that his underlings do or say, so it may well turn out to be him

    As Victoria often says “get on with it and end this shitshow ”

    Maybe we will find out a bit more US Tuesday when Stone is arraigned in Washington ?

  10. poroti:

    [‘OMG , campaign officials trying to influence voters !! When did this start happening ?’]

    I guess what matters is the manner in which they attempted to influence voters.

  11. About Erin Watson-Lynn
    https://outline.com/8dJks5

    West Australian Liberal Party sources said Ms Bishop, 62, wanted Erin Watson-Lynn, 33, to ­replace her in Curtin when she ­decides to resign, which some in the party believe could be before the federal election. But the party’s conservative forces are ­opposed to Ms Bishop’s choice of a moderate and the ­result of any preselection contest would be hard to predict, sources said.

    (Thanks for the pointer BL.)

  15. Rocket Rocket @ #899 Sunday, January 27th, 2019 – 7:19 am

    Darn 1027

    Interesting suggestion. I think this year the accidental ‘decoupling’ of January 26th and the public holiday on January 28th has somewhat dampened the usual right wing hysteria.

    The dawn service in Melbourne at the King’s domain Keeping Place was also a great initiative.

    The fact we still have a public holiday when it falls on a weekend just goes to show that’s the important part of Invasion Day. 😆

  17. phoenixRED:

    [‘Maybe we will find out a bit more US Tuesday when Stone is arraigned in Washington ?’]

    The wheels of US justice move far faster than ours – less than a week between the presentation of the indictment to arraignment.

    As for the unnamed person in the indictment, yes, it could be Bannon or a member of Trump’s family. If it’s the latter, Trump’s confidence will take a huge hit.

    I closely followed Watergate, which was played out very publicly, as opposed to Trumpgate, where it’s essentially a guessing game.

  18. Mavis Smith says: Sunday, January 27, 2019 at 11:26 am

    poroti:

    [‘OMG , campaign officials trying to influence voters !! When did this start happening ?’]

    I guess what matters is the manner in which they attempted to influence voters.

    ********************************************************

    The scoreboard SO FAR – watch this space …..

  20. phoenixRED @ #915 Sunday, January 27th, 2019 – 8:37 am

    Mavis Smith says: Sunday, January 27, 2019 at 11:26 am

    poroti:

    [‘OMG , campaign officials trying to influence voters !! When did this start happening ?’]

    I guess what matters is the manner in which they attempted to influence voters.

    ********************************************************

    The scoreboard SO FAR – watch this space …..

    ” rel=”nofollow”>

    Good god doesn’t that say it all?!

  22. When you see these independent candidates opinions, Labor wouldnt seem to have much of a problem negotiating with them, (if they have to.)

  24. Don

    Thanks for an intelligent and reasoned reply which I will comment on to the extent possible

    Andrew_Earlwood @ #832 Sunday, January 27th, 2019 – 8:49 am

    Good morning DTT

    I notice that there was much debate about where Russia ranks as a global power these days.

    “Russia as a global power” is a major preoccupation of the current Tsar. Mainly because his regime has utterly failed to grasp the opportunities that were on offer to Russia upon the collapse of the Soviet Union.

    That I think is a little unfair. As you will know Putin arrived at a time when Russia was a basket case. The collapse of the Soviet Union had been a disaster for the average Russian. many were starving, the army was not paid, professionals were all leaving, oligarchs took all the money, the Kursk sank, Chechnya was a disaster, Yeltin was an international joke, and there had been a major financial collapse which Fred was concerned about. Many predicted the further disintegration of the Russian state into many small nations. NATO was right on its borders and attempts to integrate into europe had been largely rebuffed.

    So you comment about failing to grasp opportunities, is true but it does NOT relate to the Putin period but was hideously true of the immediate post collapse period where the worst aspects of capitalim behaved with indecent greed to essentially rape and pillage the nation. Those in the West who participated in this rape and pillage (rape pretty true give the era of russian mail order brides) must take responsibility for the current hostility. You cannot humiliate a nation so strongly without getting pay back.

    That it’s economy is smaller than Australia’s and it’s GNP is only larger when adjusted for “purchasing power” is not short of a disgrace. Especially given its size, primary resources, built infrastructure, intellectual and human capital on hand at the end of the Cold War.

    Putin’s failure to grasp the opportunities available at the end of the Cold War and alloy Russia to flourish that is singularly to blame: a tsarist religio-fascist regime sitting on top of a mafia economy is inconsistent with Russia being truly great in accordance with its potential. On any GDP measure Russia’s economy should be six times larger than Australia’s.

    The first 10 years of Putin were good for Russia, and few could argue about it. Helped by strong oil prices, the Russian economy climbed out from the abyss. The army was paid, the navy honor restored if not in practice at least in morale.People were no longer starving and the worst oligarchs kicked out. debts were repaid.

    When you look at economies you need to look at the starting point. Stunningly under Putin’s first 14 years the GDP rose from 500 billion to 2.3 trillion. That is increased by 500%. That is stunning so you are being very unfair.

    In 2014 Russia was affected by falling oil prices, and by sanctions. There is some evidence that the falling oil prices was a deliberate effort by the west to weaken Russia (it was a major contributor to the collapse of the USSR).

    Since 2014 Russia DDP took a dive which was very severe but has started to recover and is still 300 times larger than it was in 1990.

    That’s why Vlad is obsessed with internal suppression and external disruption: he’s covering up failure and using all his old KGB wiles to do it. In short he’s running a medieval country and is doing what he can to drag the west backwards out of the enlightenment and into the Middle Ages. Folk like you are happy to oblige.

    I take issue with this sort of comment because it is based on biased sources and allegation not evidence, albeit widely reported. Yes it does seem more repressive than i would like BUT i think you and most of us here fool ourselves into belief that we live in a wunnerful free state. ever since the ALP agreed to “shoot to kill” approval for the 2000 Olympics i think that we like in a repressive society which only good luck and lack of any serious social unrest has prevented becoming obvious. it is always unfair to judge any nation about repression if they have no social unrest.

    Now i am NOT using this as an excuse, but i think if Australia had suffered a horror such as Beslen school, no Muslim would be safe here and if the police did not get them the vigilantes will and i suspect many here on PB among them. i am a pacifist by nature but if my kids or anyone i knew had been murdered at Beslen then i am not sure how tolerant i would be of dissidents (DESPITE MY COMMITMENT). In other words it is easy to be democratic and civil and tolerant when times are good, but much much harder when times are bad.

    It is also worth noting that when “journalists’ are killed, there is always the strong probability that they are also part time spies and that their role is not as benign as is often portrayed. Now this is NOT being somehow outrageous. Read your Le carre – but also i know from personal contacts about the extent of spy networks. Thus many businessmen and journos and artists etc, are really spies, although often part time. Indeed i think it IMPOSSIBLE for a foreign based journalist not to be part time “intelligence sources.” If I were a journo in a foreign nation and I came across information threatening Australia’s national interest, i hope i would be wise/brave enough to pass it on to our embassy. So be careful believing holus bolus claims of journalist suppression.

    So while you can make snide quips about “folks like me” I can just as easily reply “folks like you” happy to take western propaganda at face value, just as you accuse others of accepting Russian propaganda.

    As for russia’s Military, it is only at No.2 on a power ranking if one count Ptomkin Villages as well as actual capabilities. “On paper” Russia has a 170 ship Navy. In reality at any given time it has about 6 Boomer Subs and 6 attack subs that are available for deployment and less than 20 surface ships that are larger than patrol boats. Less than the Royal Navy. And the capabilities of those ships is shit. That new fangled frigate – still has massive teething problems and when they are ironed out, it and its sister ship will be less capable than the two remaining modernised Adelaide class Frigates that our Navy is operating. It has no surface ship that is as capable as our Hobart class air warfare destroyers – which are as capable as the benchmark Airleigh Burke Destroyers – which the Americans have about 150 in operation.

    Now I am not in a position to argue with you on this and suggest you look at the various sites i linked to because I have no expertise whatever.

    From Wikipedia they have 12 new (ie less than 10 years old) submarines. I suspect that they may have more because one advantage of all that Arctic ice is that i guess you could hide a sub or three.

    Certainly Russia has NOT put in any effort into a blue water navy (ie an expansionist navy) and has built a less costly defensive navy – Patrol boats, mine sweepers/layers. and smaller frigates. They seem to have 28 new ships bigger than patrol boats.

    You may have overestimated the US ships- i count 57 active Destroyers, but there may be others in reserve. From my very limited knowledge yes the US has produced a lot of very good ships. Pity they keep colliding with container ships.

    It’s Su57 stealth fighter program is a total Ptomkin village. After 10 years it announced and then cancelled production last year. Worse, while on paper it has hundreds of modern 4th generation fighters on the books, in reality it only about 70 that are operational at any one time: less than the RAAF. The Russian airforce has ear problems with engine reliability amongst other problems: it is telling that all the Russian-Indian joint ventures to modernise the 4th generation capabilities and develop a 5th generation fighter for both nations have been abandoned. The Indians have largely walked away and are looking at other options.

    OK I have no comment here.

    However you seem to ignore the one are where Russia is widely agreed to be strong – land vehicles and rocketry. Of course again this is defensive weaponry mostly.

    Of course with a large nuclear arsenals and just enough actual capability to keep America and NATO guessing as to what is real and what is a Ptomkin village nobody wants to get into an actual hot shooting war with Putin. That’s why he’s happy to call Trump’s bluff in Syria and elsewhere.

    While I do not think you can take it at face value, since you seem pretty interested and competent in this area, you really should read the March 1 speech by Putin and then do follow up to see which of his 6 new weapons are real or not.

  29. confessions

    phoenixRED’s table merely shows how difficult it is for a Republican president. Everyone is out to get them. (/sarcasm)

    I might do the conversion to “per year” and see who “wins”.

  30. Late Riser says: Sunday, January 27, 2019 at 11:42 am

    phoenixRED, do you have a link to that? I’d love to have that on permanent update.

    ***************************************************************

    Apologies Late Riser – I pinched it off someones twitter-site and not sure if I can link it ….it was part of a thread

    – NOTE – it is already out of date as Trump has done 2 years now …

    Does this work ?

    https://twitter.com/WonderBitchToo/status/1089310463337349120

  31. Re PRed @11:37.

    There’s a pattern isn’t there. Republicans more keen to give democracy a shove in the direction they want, rather than being content to let the constitution, Congrees and the voters decide?

  33. Alpo posted something last night on Australia’s sustainable population. Rather than simply reposting all the various links that point out that Australia’s carrying capacity has probably already been exceeded, I thought I’d start from scratch using current figures on raw ecological footprints per capita, and see where we ended up …

    The figures I am using are from here – http://data.footprintnetwork.org/#/

    Australians currently have an ecological footprint of about 7 hectares per capita. This means it currently takes 7 hectares of productive land to support each person. And about 300 million hectares of Australia is “productive” in any meaningful sense. This might tend to make you believe that Australia could be sustainable up to a population of about 40 million (a figure we will reach within 20 years on our current trajectory, BTW!)

    But this is too simplistic. One reason for this is that our ecological footprint at 7 hectares per person is not itself sustainable in the long term. We are, for instance, severely degrading our most productive land by over-using it (the current woes of the MDB being a classic example). Or poisoning it by fracking it. We are also depleting the Great Artesian Basin at a great rate – a resource on which much of our marginally productive land relies. We are also in the process of destroying our fishing stocks. And we are still increasing our C02 emissions per capita.

    Hardly “sustainable”!

    For our ecological footprint to become sustainable in the long term, we would have to stop damaging what productive land we have, reduce our C02 emissions (which will amongst other things require us to stop land clearing), and stop destroying our biodiversity. Some of these will increase our ecological footprint, and some will reduce the available productive land. Some will do both.

    Another reason is that global warming is likely to reduce the amount of productive land we have. Some of Australia’s marginally productive land will become completely unproductive, and some productive land will be less so. Some of course may become more productive, but overall the effect is expected to reduce productivity.

    And so our sustainable ecological footprint will very likely be higher than 7 ha, and our available long-term productive land will very likely be lower than 300 million ha. So our sustainable population is likely to be less than 40 million – but it is hard to pin down with accuracy just how much less using such a simple analysis. It is also true that you have to assume many lifestyle choices to make an accurate estimate of ecological footprint. Our current profligate lifestyle would not support 40 million, but a reduced lifestlye could perhaps do so. However, I always assume we would like to continue to enjoy something similar to our current lifestyle.

    So if we wanted to keep our current level of biodiversity and make our current lifestyle sustainable, Australia’s carrying capacity is likely to be closer to 20 million than 40 million. Perhaps much closer. Which is in keeping with the level that various studies have estimated.

    On a final note – if you work out the sustainable world population using an analysis of ecological footprint, it turns out to be about half the current population 🙁

  37. Latest sweep update on the question”Who will be the next Coalition MP to quit?”

    Steve Davis-Julie Bishop

    Quasar——Craig Laundy

    Agoo44——Peter Dutton(unsure)

    Tom———Tony Abbott

    Gareth——-Warren Entsch

    Zoidlord——NT or QLD MP

    3z———–Sussan Ley

    Late Riser—–Michelle Landry

    Grimace——Ken Wyatt

    Briefly—–Steve Irons(poss)

    Iom——-Craig Laundy

    Player One -Scott Morrison(not his own choice)

    Sgh1969—Christopher Pyne

    Rex Douglas–Kevin Andrews

    DTT——Ken Wyatt

    Bilko—–Stuart Robert

    Vote1Julia–Craig Laundy

    Sprocket–Angus Taylor

    PuffyTMD-Scott Morrison(knifed)

    Steve777–Julie Bishop

    HaveAchat–Michael McCormack

    Confessions- Craig Laundy

    Goll—— Stuart Robert ?

    Bennelong Lurker–Craig Laundy.

  39. Everyone caught up in the Trump investigations

    The long trail of legal news about President Trump’s associates — which now includes the indictment and arrest of Roger Stone — makes it easy to lose track of the broader storyline of Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

    Here’s a map to help you keep every move straight.

    How it works: The map shows the people have been convicted, pleaded guilty or charged. Go deeper for other key figures and moments of the investigation. Note that Cohen’s first guilty plea and Manafort’s conviction were on charges unrelated to Russia — but they highlight Trump’s broader legal jeopardy.

    https://www.axios.com/tracking-russia-investigation-mueller-trump-718bc918-984b-4df1-b1a0-5dafff0347b3.html

  41. Puffy @ early am. Hi Puffy, hope you are well. Thanks for your kind words, but a guy like me is unlikely to receive any awards,and in my case doesnt deserve one either.
    I nominated a bloke a couple of years ago after he had served as a volunteer with our organisation for 65 years. I nominated a woman who had served for 50 years. Neither got anything, and are dead now. It makes me grind my teeth to think of them missing out and a bloke like Reith who has probably never done a gratuitous good turn for anybody getting rewarded.

  42. Quoll
    Is it possible for a political party to own a policy? Is an attitude like ownership of a policy(ies), that becomes the catalyst for the angst which seems to periodically erupt? Or is it the passage of the legislation and the compromises that fractures.
    Surely the outcomes is the focus!

  43. Goll @ #939 Sunday, January 27th, 2019 – 8:07 am

    Quoll
    Is it possible for a political party to own a policy? Is an attitude like ownership of a policy(ies), that becomes the catalyst for the angst which seems to periodically erupt? Or is it the passage of the legislation and the compromises that fractures.
    Surely the outcomes is the focus!

    Haven’t you seen all the Green patents! 😆

  46. Just thinking.

    The Trump associated indictments and our own Banking RC seem to highlight how out of wack business thinking and practice is with what the Society regards as acceptable behaviour.

    Almost like a religion.

  47. Some else has noticed Man Baby’s obsession with migrant women being duct-taped, like he’s citing from an episode of CSI. Weird.

    Nevertheless, there was Trump on Jan. 4, dramatizing the traffickers who “have three or four women with tape on their mouths and tied up, sitting in the back of a van or car.” There he was on Jan. 6: “They nab women, they grab them, they put tape over their mouths.” On Jan. 11: “Taping them up, wrapping tape around their mouths so they can’t shout or scream, tying their hands behind their back and even their legs.”

    Sometimes the tape is explicitly duct tape, sometimes it’s electrical. Sometimes it has a specific color, as it did on Jan. 10: “Usually blue tape, as they call it. It’s powerful stuff. Not good.”

    …

    The president is obsessed with the idea of exploited women in peril, which is odd for a man whose empire was partially built on exploited women in bikinis. Women slain by undocumented immigrants are cornerstones of his speeches. He doesn’t merely mention them, he lingers on them, often with the same leering cinematic detail that he’s brought to his duct tape fantasy. “An Air Force veteran was raped, murdered and beaten to death by a hammer,” is how he described the death of Marilyn Pharis.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/why-does-the-president-keep-talking-about-women-and-duct-tape-on-the-border/2019/01/25/cb4d9160-20da-11e9-8b59-0a28f2191131_story.html?utm_term=.e19765ec1ac8

  50. Late Riser says: Sunday, January 27, 2019 at 12:12 pm

    To nearest whole numbers, the rate of Presidential Administration criminal activity per year…

    ***********************************************

    WOW just WOW …. According to Poroti its all just a big fat ‘nothingburger’ ……. all those people just sitting around innocently watching the clouds drift by and getting nailed for it

    I would hate to see what this table looked like if there was any truth to the rumour that the Trump campaign ‘colluded/conspired’ with foreign/outside sources …. 🙂

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