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.
mikehilliard
Scrott just demonstrating a riff on JK Galbraith’s observation…..
.
The Federal Government has opened the door to Australia developing a nuclear energy industry. 7NEWS can exclusively reveal a joint parliamentary inquiry has been commissioned to investigate whether Australia should build nuclear power plants. @Riley7News #7NEWS
I wonder if Bowe can levy court costs on the bizarre pseudo-litigation being run here between nath and C@tMomma?
sprocket_ @ #850 Friday, August 2nd, 2019 – 4:32 pm
Well that was predictable after all the nuclear cheer squading from the Qld LNP after the election clearly emboldened and empowered them.
E. G. Theodore @ #854 Friday, August 2nd, 2019 – 6:35 pm
Do tell. I have the lower than a snake’s belly little worm blocked for the sake of my gastrointestinal system’s calmness.
And proof that you don’t even need to change the government in order to change the country.
sprocket_ @ #853 Friday, August 2nd, 2019 – 6:32 pm
And? Who says we need one? Other than the capitalists who stand to financially benefit, that is.
Well, the trouble all began back when you started it, in response to nothing at all.
Earnings are not an indication of social utility otherwise nurses and teachers would earn a lot more than corporate lawyers and tax accountants.
Money is the reward for being good at making money -with yours or with someone else’s. Many money-making pursuits are actually parasitic, for example gaming, drug dealing, real estate speculation, some aspects of the modern, bloated finance industry.
William Bowe @ #859 Friday, August 2nd, 2019 – 6:51 pm
That’s a broad brush statement that doesn’t really tell me much. Subjective, to boot.
The only thing Nath has said to you today was a response to your unprovoked attack on him.
sprocket_ @ #852 Friday, August 2nd, 2019 – 6:32 pm
This is just a delaying tactic. The government will do anything to avoid jeaopardizing the fossil fuel industry, or to avoid putting money into renewables.
This committee will faff about for a couple of years and then regretfully report what anyone with any brains already knows – i.e. that Australia simply doesn’t have the tecnological know-how or the infrastructure or the manufacturing base to build and support nuclear plants.
But by then they will have gained a few more years of fossil fuel exports, which is all that really matters to them 🙁
William Bowe @ #862 Friday, August 2nd, 2019 – 7:06 pm
Oh. I’ll go back and have a look. I’ll apologise if needs be.
P1:
It’s a sop to the Qld LNP and MPs like Canavan. Like you say it’s just a further excuse to do nothing on abating our GHGEs.
I’m really hoping that this intransigence and do-nothingness from our govt on just about every significant matter of important public policy will herald a sharp correction to the ALP in 2022 in order to reverse the stagnation we’ve seen the last 6+ years.
nath @ #844 Friday, August 2nd, 2019 – 5:39 pm
Ah this.
A comment of mine, taken out of context, as is the wont of troublemakers, so as to cast aspersions about someone’s character that wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny if the full context of the comment were known.
Now, my memory may have failed me, but I’m sure I made that comment in the context of the known fact that Africans who wish to access birth control, due to their generally well-known poverty were unable to do so. Therefore, I wouldn’t be averse to paying for them to be able to get it.
And that is wrong because?
sprocket_ @ #851 Friday, August 2nd, 2019 – 6:32 pm
And just yesterday evening I chanced upon Chanel 7 (desperately seeking signs of TV intelligence) when a segment was being run which declared that 2000 jobs had been found with no trouble at all – didn’t raise a sweat one assumes.
So take that youse dole bludgers with yer drug taking layabout ways. There’s a job for you at IGA right now.
Goodnight all. 📺💤💤
Now, if someone could tell me how to go back into the archives, as easily and as quickly as possible, to find the comment that nath made about Bill and Chloe Shorten and Prince Harry, so as to get the exact wording, I would most appreciate it.
William Bowe says:
Friday, August 2, 2019 at 6:15 pm
Does that mean Stalin was a Libling too?
Good question.
The CPA ran industrial and political campaigns against Labor and Curtin. They were financed, organised and directed by Stalin, who had done a deal with Hitler so that Poland could be dismembered. When Germany attacked Russia the CPA switched sides. After the war they reverted to their usual position of being opposed to Labor and they set out to run interference against Labor to the advantage of Menzies, who nevertheless sought to suppress the CPA.
Stalin would have been amused by the Greens. He was good at sponsoring disinformation and financing splitting/disruption. He would have regarded them as useful idiots in his quest to cause trouble for the democracies. Doubtless his motives were different, but his methods in this country were similar to those of the Lib-kin. He preferred a Liberal Government to a successful social democratic one. The same is true of the Greens. They detest Labor and work every day to defeat them.
Politics is a tough game; only for the strong. Although Shorten was never really prime-ministerial material, it’s very much doubted Albanese is either. Maybe briefly’s right? When one goes back, there’s none who at present really impress – so sad, when recalling such luminaries
Player One @ #863 Friday, August 2nd, 2019 – 7:12 pm
A re-showing of “Yes Minister” and “Yes Prime Minister”, or better yet an updated remake, would not be amiss. I also caught the end of an interesting interview recently by Richard Fidler where the interviewee, whose name I didn’t catch, very very reluctantly proposed that Australia should openly consider nuclear weapons because of the USA’s changing foreign policy. He went on to say that this was despite Australia’s decades of opposition and the regional destabilisation that would follow. I sometimes think the human planet is itching for a bit of mindless conflagration.
C@tmomma @ #864 Friday, August 2nd, 2019 – 7:18 pm
It’s terrible to be misrepresented, isn’t it …?
Mavis:
Shorten would’ve been a far superior PM to the incumbent.
Here it is C@t:
_____________________
nath says:
Tuesday, August 18, 2018 at 1:13 am
I bet Chloe would prefer to hang out with Prince Harry rather than poor old Bill.
Mavis Davis @ #868 Friday, August 2nd, 2019 – 7:30 pm
None of them have any authority. The power rests with the big union factional leaders who contrive policy positions.
Nath, that isn’t the quote and you know it. The quote C@t is talking about was much worse and you were called on it at the time.
Jolyon Wagg says:
Friday, August 2, 2019 at 7:47 pm
Nath, that isn’t the quote and you know it. The quote C@t is talking about was much worse and you were called on it at the time.
______________________
If you can find a non existent quote then good luck to you. It doesn’t exist.
I recall the quote in question and it was disgraceful.
Albanese won’t last. He’s already being torn down and undermined by leakers no doubt being urged on by their factional leaders.
Steve777 says:
Friday, August 2, 2019 at 7:49 pm
I recall the quote in question and it was disgraceful.
________________
If you can find it perhaps you can be outraged again.
This is atrocious. The carbon emissions abatement fund (aka LNP slush fund for mates) is now associated with emissions rising.
Exactly, Jolyon. But I now have a rough date to go back to and have a look around. I mean, the fact that you remember that that wasn’t the statement, proves, if only to a limited extent, that nath did say something worse. I think it was around the time that a photo of Bill and Chloe meeting Prince Harry and Meaghan popped up. As did nath’s rancid comment about it.
nath @ #879 Friday, August 2nd, 2019 – 7:50 pm
You’ll just be pleased with yourself for creating outrage, all over again.
I can imagine the furious archive search now being undertaken… 😆
I think this might be the tawdry quote that C@t was thinking of, but it refers to Murdoch rather than Prince Harry.
Nath,
The quote was made on October 22, 2018.
Confessions:
[‘Shorten would’ve been a far superior PM to the incumbent.’]
Possibly, but we’ll never know, Shorten giving it his best chance, falling short by a whisker.
First dog has lost popularity here, but he’s still worth a link: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/02/if-you-act-now-you-can-maybe-avoid-the-worst-of-climate-change-but-you-know-youre-not-going-to
Rex:
Please stop being anti-union. After all, it was the unions who leveled the playing field between capital and the workers, the latter of whom I’m sure you’d support?.
Confessions @ #871 Friday, August 2nd, 2019 – 7:37 pm
Amazing isn’t it. Scrott Morrison. Really who would have thought it.
The tories end up in office probably for another two or three terms with a fucking non entity like Morrison and all because Labor had no alternative capable of knocking off a complete fucking nobody. No wonder Hawke died.
Steve777 @ #887 Friday, August 2nd, 2019 – 7:59 pm
FDOTM echoes my sentiments exactly. Everyone knows by now that we are committing slow suicide, but everyone also knows we are not going to stop. Party on, dude!
Future civilizations will no doubt write unnumerable theses on this topic to try and explain how such a bizarre thing could actually happen. But sadly we’ll never get to read them, on account of being dead 🙁
Mavis Davis @ #887 Friday, August 2nd, 2019 – 8:05 pm
I’m pro-union.
I just don’t like certain union management who sell out their members interests for kickbacks and political power.
@Mavis Davis
For all my reservations about Bill Shorten, I reckon Labor would have won easily, if Scott Morrison had not been leader. If Peter Dutton had become leader especially so, even if Clive Palmer was pouring millions to attack Labor.
Because Morrison being a showman, is very adapted to the contemporary political climate, which favors other showmen like Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, that comedian who became Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and I suspect Boris Johnson.
Jolyon Wagg
says:
Friday, August 2, 2019 at 7:55 pm
I think this might be the tawdry quote that C@t was thinking of, but it refers to Murdoch rather than Prince Harry.
Nath,
At their first meeting Shorten will drop to his knees, kiss the ring. He will offer whatever Murdoch wants, including Chloe’s phone number, and then be dismissed like a starving waiter.
_____________________________________
Nothing about pimping, Prince Harry or anything remotely offensive there.
Putin of course is a Libling….perhaps Trumpling is closer. Putin and Stalin have similar goals but somewhat different methods, though the use of secretive State power to dispose of political enemies is a Stalinist technique still employed by Putin.
Late Riser @ #7015 Friday, August 2nd, 2019 – 7:30 pm
LR: I think that was Hugh White on LNL 16 July. He was a bit more considered than “Nukes Good”.
Morrison is a Trumpling.
In Rexology, to be pro-union is to wish for their theoretical existence only. Actual unions are to be discredited and then destroyed.
Rex is pro-union in the same way that Christian Porter is pro-union.
Rex:
[‘I’m pro-union.’]
Sometimes, I’m not so sure. It seems to, from time to time, you’ll take the opportunity to bag Labor, the broader labour movement.
I think what we really need is some low-calibre honours theses, on topics such as:
1 .The emergence and evolution of “negging” in Pollbludger 2018-2019,
2. “Nath is Bill Shorten”, the unexpurgated case for the offence,
3. The Picture of Dorian Shorten, a shameless homage and encomium, and so on
But here is Jolyon Wagg advocating a Nazi style reign of terror on political opponents of the ALP. Murder and probably worse!
Jolyon Wagg
says:
Tuesday, February 2, 2016 at 1:17 am
Next ti e the ALP form government there should be a very harsh “night of the long knives”. One that people will remember with a shudder.