Quite a bit to report of late, starting out with federal redistribution prospects for the coming term:
• The Australian Parliamentary Library has published a research paper on the likely outcome of the state and territory seat entitlement determinations when they are calculated in the middle of the next year. The conclusion reached is as it was when I did something similar in January: that Western Australia is sure to lose the sixteenth seat it gained in 2016; that Victoria will sneak over the line to gain a thirty-ninth (and its second in consecutive electoral cycles, a prodigiousness once associated with Queensland); and the Northern Territory will fall below it and lose one of its two seats.
• The West Australian reports Liberal and Labor will respectively be lobbying for Burt and Hasluck to be abolished, though given the two are neighbours, this is perhaps a fine distinction – the effect of either might be to put Matt Keogh and Ken Wyatt in competition for an effectively merged seat. The view seems to be that an eastern suburbs seat would be easiest to cut, as the core electorates of the metropolitan area are strongly defined by rivers and the sea, and three seats are needed to account for the state’s periphery. (There was also a new set of state boundaries for Western Australia published on Friday, which you can read all about here).
• The predicted outcome in the Northern Territory, whose population has taken a battering since the end of the resources construction boom, would leave its single electorate with an enrolment nearly 30% above the national norm – an awkward look for what would also be the country’s most heavily indigenous electorate. The Northern Territory has had two electorates since 1996, but came close to losing one in 2003 when its population fell just 295 below the entitlement threshold. This was averted through a light legislative tweak, but this time the population shortfall is projected to approach 5000.
Poll news:
• The word from Essential Research that its voting intention numbers will resume in “a month or two”. Curiously, its public line is that its reform efforts are focused on its “two-party preferred modelling”, when the pollsters’ critical failures came on the primary vote.
• Kevin Bonham laments the crisis-what-crisis stance adopted by The Australian and YouGov Galaxy upon the return of Newspoll. My own coverage of the matter was featured in a paywalled Crikey article on Monday, which concluded thus:
In the past, YouGov Galaxy has felt able to justify the opaqueness of its methods on the grounds that its “track record speaks for itself”. That justification will be finding far fewer takers today than it did before the great shock of May 18.
• Liberal insiders have been spruiking their success in winning back the support of working mothers as the key to their election win, as related through an account of internal party research in the Age/Herald. However, Jill Sheppard at the Australian National University retorts that the numbers cited are quantitative data drawn from qualitative research (specifically focus groups), which is assuredly not the right idea.
Preselection news:
• There are six preselection nominees for Mitch Fifield’s Liberal Senate vacancy in Victoria: Sarah Henderson, until recently the member for the Corangamite, and generally reckoned the favourite; Greg Mirabella, former state party vice-president and the husband of Sophie Mirabella, whose prospects were talked up in The Australian last week; Chris Crewther, recently defeated member for Dunkley; state politics veteran and 2018 election casualty Inga Peulich; and, less familiarly, Kyle Hoppitt, John MacIsaac and Mimmie Watts.
• The Australian last week reported a timeline had yet to be set for the preselection to replace Arthur Sinodinos in New South Wales. The Sydney Morning Herald reports Liberal moderates might be planning on backing a candidate of the hard Right, rather than one of their own in James Brown, state RSL president and son-in-law of Malcolm Turnbull. The idea is apparently that the nominee will then go on to muscle aside factional colleague Connie Fierravanti-Wells at preselection for the next election. However, all that’s known of that potential candidate is that it won’t be Jim Molan, who is opposed by feared moderate operator Michael Photios.
• The Sydney Morning Herald report also relates that former Premier Mike Baird’s withdrawal from the race to become chief executive of the National Australia Bank has prompted suggestions he might have his eye on a federal berth in Warringah at the next election. Also said to be interested is state upper house MP Natalie Ward.
Electoral law news:
• The Guardian reports that Oliver Yates, independent candidate for Kooyong, is challenging Josh Frydenberg’s win on the grounds that Chinese language signs demonstrating how to vote Liberal looked rather a lot like instructions from the Australian Electoral Commission. The complainant must establish that the communication was “likely to mislead or deceive an elector in relation to the casting of a vote”, which has provided a rich seem of unsuccessful litigation over the decades. It seems it is acknowledged that this is only the test case, in that it is not anticipated the court will overturn the result. Such might have been the case in Chisholm, which was the focal point of complaints about the signs, and where the result was much closer. However, Labor has opted not to press the issue, no doubt because it has little cause to think a by-election would go well for them. Yates’s challenge has been launched days prior to today’s expiry of the 40-day deadline for challenges before the Court of Disputed Returns.
• The difficulty of getting such actions to stick, together with the general tenor of election campaigning in recent years, have encouraged suggestions that a truth-in-advertising regime may be in order, such as operates at state level in South Australia. More from Mike Steketee in Inside Story.
If there was ever any doubt, that tweet from Shelton shows he’s just an attention seeking opportunistic fake.
Rex D
100%
Tory Government’s working majority reduced to 1 at by-election.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/uk-wales-politics-49103064
Are there not already laws on the books against trespassing and home-invasion? Why do farmers get special extra protections under the law?
One you hope does not arrive on your desk
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-02/perth-mass-murderer-anthony-robert-harvey-appeals-jail-term/11378346
So Barnarby does the right thing by his girlfriend, as a result of doing the wrong thing by his, y’know, actual wife and family.
That’s some seriously fucked-up moral elasticity goin’ on there.
Next thing we’ll be hearing how gay marriage is a threat to the Family and morally reprobate.
Even Barnarby and his urgers wouldn’t try putting that over anyon—–
Oh, wait…
Bushfire Bill @ #805 Friday, August 2nd, 2019 – 3:15 pm
Are you trying to say that Barnaby is going to leave Vicky for Victor!?! 😆
a r @ #803 Friday, August 2nd, 2019 – 3:12 pm
Simples. To sure up the Farming vote for The Nationals. 😐
The 1930s in Australia commenced with the split in Labor and saw the rise of the UAP and the formation of the New Guard, a Rightist anti-worker paramilitary extra-parliamentary political outfit. Labor remained divided and in a minority until the ascendancy of Curtin after 1941.
The Labor split of 1931 was followed by the shift of political support from Labor to the Right during the Depression years. Joseph Lyons, who had been a Labor Premier in Tasmania, successfully led the rightwing UAP until his death in 1939.
This followed the example of the UK, where the 1930s also saw the rise of a very conservative National government – a coalition of breakaway elements from Labour that merged with Conservatives and Liberals and won a landslide victory in 1931.
The Right have usually done well in Australia during years of crisis. They prospered after Labor split in 1917, not losing another election until 1929 and winning again very easily following the onset of the Depression. They precipitated a political crisis in 1975 and again won overwhelmingly.
The idea that crises favour the Left in Australia is completely mistaken. Rather, moments of crisis reveal the deep roots of conservative attachments in this country, and the enduring political hold of the conservative parties. We have a long-running crisis in the labour market in selected parts of the Australian economy and a developing crisis in the environment. These are not helping Labor. On the contrary, they have been successfully exploited by Labor’s enemies on all sides, including the Far Right.
This article by Coorey canvasses an interesting issue. (I’ve only got the start which isn’t paywalled but it gives the general idea.
In recent times there has been a growing gulf between what most businesses want and what the Trump and Morrison regimes, for example, want to impose through legislation. Consider the response to climate change and renewable energy, industrial relations, trade and the relationship with China.
The majority of the business sector seems to accept the reality of global warming and the need to act urgently on climate change, because climate change is understood to impact on the bottom line and the sustainability of the business.
Similarly with industrial relations – the last thing most employers (except rogue operators associated with the LNP) want is employees who feel aggrieved at their treatment in the workplace.
Increasingly, it seems that Trump, Morrison and now Johnson are more beholden to the forces of social conservatism, climate denial and inequality than business, which is moving in the opposite direction as a way of ensuring sustainability.
In this, of course, are the seeds of eventual self-destruction of the governments in the US, UK and Australia which are currently exhibiting forms of extreme RW ideology. No government which has strayed very far from the centre can survive in the long term. Business, on the other hand, is much more adaptable.
Amanda Vanstone is a grub. Andrew Bolt is a grub. Brendan O’Neill, likewise is a grub.
Greta Thunberg is a goddess!
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-02/thunberg-hits-back-after-being-called-deeply-disturbed/11376724
It must be very embarrassing for these self-important characters to be outclassed by a 16 year old!
One for Buce Phallus to ponder….
By Rebecca Naden
Updated August 2, 2019 —
Llanelwedd, Wales: Britain’s pro-European Union Liberal Democrats have won the parliamentary seat of Brecon and Radnorshire in a byelection from the governing Conservatives on Friday, a blow to Prime Minister Boris Johnson in his first electoral test since taking office.
The result reduces the new British leader’s working majority in the House of Commons to one.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/boris-johnson-s-parliamentary-majority-reduced-to-one-20190802-p52d8v.html
citizen,
If you are interested in the rest of that Coorey article, BK outlined it this morning. Just click on the link below:
https://outline.com/TTHFJR
C@tmomma @ #809 Friday, August 2nd, 2019 – 1:39 pm
Why is it the children providing leadership on AGW? Where are all the freakin’ grown ups?
citizen @ #811 Friday, August 2nd, 2019 – 3:45 pm
But! But! They actually care for her! She’s being taken advantage of by Climate Change Activists!
….Actually, they’re probably pissed off that they couldn’t be the earworm inside her head first. 😆
Why is it the children providing leadership on AGW? Where are all the freakin’ grown ups?
Sitting in front of the TV watching The Batchelor and Fox News. 😐
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-02/whistleblowers-criticise-parentsnext/11363874
The Canberra cartel is so disconnected from reality.
@briefly 3:21pm.
That post was much better and I think – from memory a pretty accurate summation of voting trends in the UK and Australia in the 1930s, but your post that I was responding to talked about the working class voting for “the far right”. I’m sorry, shit heals they may have been, but neither the UK Tories or our own UAP in the 1930s could be truly considered “far right”. No doubt they had far right fellow travellers within their ranks but the ALP also had communist fellow travellers within its ranks – that didn’t mean that the ALP of the 1930s was communist.
Of course, hard times didn’t stop FDR rolling up the Republicans for the 1930s. The working class and unemployed voted hugely for the Democrats.
I think the FDR model of selling hope is the best shot that the left and centre left have. Unfortunately the ‘Green New Deql’ is Just too twee to be relatable to the folk that are going to decide the political outcomes in America over the next decade. The situation is worse here – “Green” anything is simply toxic as a branding exercise in the outer rim suburbs of our main cities and regional centres. “We” need something better. And “we” (by which I mean the Greens and other assorted left wing hard head) need to stop tearing Labor apart just because ..: if ever theee was a time to come together and make common cause, now is that time.
Confessions
Interesting you should ask, Greta would like to know as well.
Adrian Beaumont post on developments in the UK:
https://www.pollbludger.net/2019/08/02/uk-brecon-radnorshire-election-liberal-democrat-gain-conservative
Matthew Guy made a complete ballsup of central Melbourne development and allowed “mates” to make millions profit for no community value.
How quaintly naive. It’s not “just” because of that. She hasn’t learned about vested interests yet. Those are also a big part of why some science-literate adults act like assholes instead of like adults. 🙂
A_E…..I should choose my terms more carefully. However, the Nationalist government of SM Bruce was a decidedly anti-worker government. Bruce wanted to dismantle the Industrial Arbitration system. The Lyons government pursued a really deeply conservative economic agenda – the Premiers Plan – that ran in contrast to the reformist and expansionary policies adopted in NZ and the US. Aggressively Rightist sentiments were well-supported in the 1920s and especially in the 1930s.
Working people have been voting in recent times for the Exhibitionist Right in Australia too – for Hanson in particular and for reactionary voices and policies propagated by the LNP.
As for the Communists….we have the Greens. They are not represented in the unions these days, but they have had more political success than the CPA ever did. The centre-left is badly divided….and the Right are profiteering.
mikeh:
Good on her!
mikehilliard @ #6630 Friday, August 2nd, 2019 – 4:21 pm
The GRASPers are terrified of Thunberg – they have no control & no counter.
I like Runciman’s gambit , mainly because it makes the Manbabies cry. Votes for 6 year olds!
I see others here are equally appalled by an aging media hack with fakes emotions and no conscience attacking a school girl born with a medical condition that means she has trouble displaying emotion but has no trouble displaying courage and a great social conscience.
Perhaps Andrew Bolt is jealous that a school girl with some guts can attract more public following in 12 months holding up a sign than he can attract in thirty years with the entire Murdoch media empire to ram his rancid messages into our homes.
Speaking of losers, it struck me the first time that Pauline Hanson rose to prominence that many of her followers were pathetic losers, usually middle-aged men, looking to blame others for their own failures in life. I see that in 20 years not much has changed.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-02/fraser-anning-facing-bankruptcy-believed-to-be-in-united-states/11377610
Greta Thunberg should just sue Bolt
Oh dear, briefly is in lock-step with the right-wing trope the Greens are communists.
Socrates @ #6638 Friday, August 2nd, 2019 – 4:54 pm
The scum float to the top of the cesspool, like a steatorrhoeic stool. We dregs disappear without trace.
It wouldn’t be a Murdoch media columnist without the pathetic whining and victimhood, trying to take down other people for daring to have a different opinion to them.
By-election victor: People ‘demand better’
New MP Jane Dodds said her constituents had chosen hope over fear.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/uk-wales-politics-49103064
Who thinks this stuff up?
Thanks C@tmomma. At the moment I’m missing slabs of PB comments because I can’t log in all the time. Coorey is saying more or less what I said above – much of the business world is p’d off with the RW ideology currently driving the LNP. Seeing Ian Smith’s comments in the article, Morrison could be facing a battle between the pragmatic moderates and the RWNJs in the not too distant future.
Greta Thunberg has far more poise and intelligence than Amanda Vanstone. Anyone who downplays the risk of global warming and counsels moderation and delay has appalling judgement. The global warming downplayers have a tenuous claim to being recognized as adults with basic adult levels of prudence, responsibility, and information processing.
Shellbell:
You have missed the opportunity to write (pseudo-Oxonianly?)
There’s really nothing like a good “one one” turn of phrase
ABC RN Breakfast interview re gambling sector:
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/calls-for-tougher-rules-for-gambling-sector/11376676
Andrew_Earlwood:
Unfortunately the (supposed) existence of the word ‘relatable’ is a sign that the public is now completely immune to persuasion by rational argument.
ABC RN Breakfast Friday wrap panel: Katharine Murphy, political editor, Guardian Australia; Michelle Grattan, chief political correspondent, The Conversation, and Shane Wright, national economics correspondent, The Age
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/politicians-head-home-from-canberra-as-parliament-wraps-up/11376670
a r @ #823 Friday, August 2nd, 2019 – 4:27 pm
Funnily enough, the most naive people on the planet are the Bolts, Morrisons, Malcolm Roberts, Trumps, Johnsons, Abbotts, Hansons et al because they’ve been spinning around on it for decades without understanding the first thing about what it should be to be a human being on this closed-system Earth.
C@tmomma
says:
Friday, August 2, 2019 at 1:16 pm
Not to mention nath’s vile and sexually explicit slur against Bill and Chloe Shorten, wherein he stated that Bill Shorten would pimp Chloe out to Prince Harry if it would make him more popular before the election.
_____________________________
Total bullshit. But talking about outrageous, I do recall your statement on Africa, being that the only charitable cause you would contribute to in Africa would be to limit the African population:
C@tmomma says:
Thursday, October 18, 2018 at 5:48 pm
I would only pay for birth control for Africans.
This sounds like the famous telephone conversation between Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
Greta Thunberg is courageous and articulate, but it is her youth that adds the extra “something”. Good on her. In that vein, last evening I was at dinner with family (a loose description, but accurate) sitting by a 10 year old boy, discussing upcoming birthday events. He announced that he would live to 99, to the amusement of the “adults”. It occurred to me, and I pointed out, that he would then be living in the 22nd century. What was interesting was the silence that followed.
Pegasus says:
Friday, August 2, 2019 at 4:58 pm
Oh dear, briefly is in lock-step with the right-wing trope the Greens are communists.
The CPA rode shotgun for Stalin. The Greens ride shotgun for the Lib-Libs. They’re both anti-Labor outfits. They’re both splitters.
Does that mean Stalin was a Libling too?
Shellbell @10:00
OC
Margaret Cunneen is to the right of the right side of the little toe on nath’s right foot
Did you have your irony monitor turned off this morning?
https://static.ffx.io/images/$zoom_1.5655912071989626,$multiply_1,$ratio_1.776846,$width_1059,$x_601,$y_478/t_crop_custom/w_800/q_86,f_auto/bad72bc6eed4b16a7e099c6e1ab4a78ca7404259
A little known fact is that his middle name was actually Либлинг . So Uncle Joe was definitely in on the game, hidden in plain sight.
Well no duh.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/02/scott-morrisons-work-harder-to-earn-more-nonsense-shows-how-out-of-touch-with-workers-he-is