So much trouble in the world

Upheaval in conservative politics in New South Wales over abortion law; a pickle for Labor in Tasmania over a vacancy in state parliament; and suggestions of a looming state by-election in Victoria.

In New South Wales:

A row over a bill to decriminalise abortion is prompting murmurings about Gladys Berejiklian’s leadership just five months after she led the Coalition to an impressive election victory, with tremors that are being felt federally. The bill was introduced by independent MP Alex Greenwich, but its sponsors included the Berejiklian government’s Health Minister, Brad Hazzard. It was headed last week for passage through both houses of parliament, before Berejiklian bowed to conservative outrage by pushing back the final vote in the upper house by nearly a month. Claiming credit for this concession is Barnaby Joyce, whose high-profile interventions have angered his state Nationals colleagues, most of whom support the bill (prompting Mark Latham, who now holds a crucial upper house vote as a member of One Nation, to tar the party with the cultural Marxist brush). Following suggestions the party room had discussed expelling him from the party, Joyce said he would go of his own accord if four of them publicly called for him to do so. It doesn’t appear that is going to happen, but if it did, the government would be reduced from 77 seats in the House of Representatives out of 151, costing it its absolute majority on the floor.

In Tasmania:

Labor MP Scott Bacon’s decision to end his state parliamentary career, citing family reasons, represents an unwelcome turn of events for an already understaffed state opposition, owing to the manner in which parliamentary vacancies are filled under Hare-Clark. This will involve a “recount” (as officially known, though “countback” is the generally preferred term for such procedures) of the votes that got Bacon elected to his seat in Denison (which is now called Clark), either as first or subsequent preferences. The procedure is open to any unsuccessful candidates from the previous election who care to nominate, among whom is Madeleine Ogilvie, a former incumbent who was defeated in 2018 – possibly because progressive sentiment had been alienated by her social conservatism.

The problem for Labor is that Ogilvie has since parted company with the party, to the extent of running as an independent for an upper house seat in May. If she wins the recount, and no reconciliation with the party is forthcoming, there will be nothing to stop her sitting as an independent, reducing Labor from ten seats to nine in a chamber of 25. As explained by Kevin Bonham, we can see from the 2018 results that this will produce a “first preference” count in which 33.1% of the vote goes to Madeleine Ogilvie and 28.4% to Tim Cox, a former ABC Radio presenter who ran unsuccessfully, and has confirmed he will nominate for the recount. More than half the remainder went to candidates who are not in contention because they’re already in parliament, so it will assuredly be one or the other.

In Victoria:

John Ferguson of The Australian reports the Liberals have been conducting internal polling for former party leader Matthew Guy’s seat of Bulleen, prompting speculation he will shortly quit parliament. The Liberals retained the seat with a 5.8% margin even amid the debacle of last November’s election, and the polling is “believed to show the Liberal brand holding up”.

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.

2,112 comments on “So much trouble in the world”

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  7. Big A Adrian says:
    Thursday, August 29, 2019 at 9:07 pm
    BW “Meanwhile, the Right is wrecking the joint.”

    Exactly. And yet you are far more obsessed with some petty vendetta against the greens. Like most of the labor cabal here. Bizarre. Still at least you acknowledge the greens are on the left. Briefly actually believes the greens are on the right.

    Inasmuch as the Greens set out to disable, discredit and defeat Labor, the authentic political voice of working people, the Greens are a Rightist expression. Inasmuch as their strategies succeed and lead to the election of Liberal governments, the Greens are a Rightist expression. Inasmuch as they are an anti-labour Party they are a Rightist expression.

    They systematically mislead their own supporters, which is also characteristically Rightist. The ascent of the Greens has been matched by the decline in the Labor-positive plurality. They serve the interests of the Right. They have never denied it.

  8. So much trouble in the world, including what toilet to use.

    Toiletgate appears on the websites of the Sydney Morning Herald and the ABC. Why do supposedly serious news outlets take the bait, except maybe to laugh at it as a ridiculous attempt by a right wing Government to rouse its base?

  9. ”
    Dio:

    Good call!”

    That would have been a difficult one, especially for an intern. The patient would have been referred to a specialist who would be better placed to answer. Agree, good call.

  10. That would have been a difficult one, especially for an intern.

    Or for any human being for that matter.

    Do you give the wife honesty, throwing her trust in her husband under the bus? Or lie and damage your own medical credentials in the process? Even more challenging for an intern, someone starting out.

  11. The Prices and Incomes Accord of 1983 was an example of the federal government using its influence to effect a freeze on wages. It didn’t involve the removal of centralised wage determination. It was a temporary measure to address an episodic problem.

    Nobody is saying that the introduction of enterprise bargaining in the early 1990s is the only cause of rising inequality. But it was definitely a major cause of inequality and one of the many bad decisions of the Hawke and Keating Governments.
    http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/explore/cabinet/by-year/wages-industrial-relations.aspx

    The establishment of a Prices and Incomes Accord was central to Hawke’s election strategy, although some unions were wary of the idea. The process began with a national economic summit in April, which brought together the leaders in politics, business, finance and the unions. Hawke told Cabinet on 18 April that the most satisfying aspect of the summit was the willingness of all parties to accept their shared responsibility for addressing the current economic problems. It was agreed that there would be a return to central wage fixing, unions would accept reduced wage increases in recognition of the restructured Medicare scheme and other welfare benefits, mechanisms for price surveillance would be examined, financial restraint would be shared by all and welfare should be focused on the most needy.

  13. Inasmuch as the Greens set out to disable, discredit and defeat Labor, the authentic political voice of working people …

    “Voice of the working people”? Hardly. You wish they were, but they aren’t. I wish they were, for that matter.

    No party fits the bill of Workers Champion. Rather, the “working people” have deserted the parties in favour of simple transactionism: highest bidder stuff.

    Labor clings to an old-time, outdated and nostalgic definition of “working people”, centered around unions (which are nearly defunct).

    The Liberals and Nationals regard anyone who is not a boss (a good definition of “working people”) as a slave, to be paid a slave’s wages and dropped into the gig economy quagmire to flounder around.

    The Greens are vain and venal. They don’t care about anything but their own advancement. If they did care, then they would have achieved more than they have so far (which is effectively nothing). Workers aren’t even cogs in the Green machine. They are by-products.

  15. bucephalus:

    I am under no obligation to be unbiased- unlike the Speaker.

    The Speaker of the House of Commons is obliged to be biased in favour of the House if it is in conflict with the Executive (or the Judiciary?)

    Addendum: see “Good Parliament” for the earliest example.

  17. briefly:

    Warren scares the crap out of me in particular when I think about how she would fare head to head in those crucial swing states against Trump.

  18. sarahf: I also thought the second quarter’s fundraising numbers were particularly telling when it came to support for Warren and Sanders. Warren tripled her numbers from the first quarter and raised the third-most from individual contributors, after Pete Buttiegieg and Biden (and before Sanders). And even though a greater percentage of Sanders’s donations currently come from small donors (or those giving $200 or less) than Warren,

    ……a Los Angeles Times analysis found that more than 80 percent of the donors who funded Sanders’s 2016 bid have not given to him this cycle, so this is, to me, evidence of a larger enthusiasm problem with Sanders…..

    Sanders’ star is dimming….

  20. Confessions says:
    Thursday, August 29, 2019 at 10:53 pm
    briefly:

    Warren scares the crap out of me in particular when I think about how she would fare head to head in those crucial swing states against Trump.

    I like her a lot. She’s everything Trump is not. This will activate the Democratic electorate. We can be certain the Republican numbers will crank. The Democratic cohorts have to be roused. If they vote they will win. This was certainly evident in the mid-terms and will again be accentuated in 2020.

    I like her. She has ‘winner’ written all over her. Her negative rankings are in the low single figures. People will come out for her.

  21. briefly:

    Simply bringing out the Democrat vote isn’t going to be enough. And plenty of analysts have pointed to Republican voters staying home in the mid terms, but you can bet they’ll be out in force in 2020 to vote for Trump.

    Democrats need a presidential candidate who can appeal to Republicans antsy about their party under Trump. Especially those in those swing states which matter to the electoral college. I just don’t believe that Elizabeth Warren is that candidate.

  22. E. G. Theodore says:
    Thursday, August 29, 2019 at 10:54 pm
    Briefly:

    Your history 1940s-1970s left out capital controls I think…

    Yes, you’re right to draw attention to this. The era of fixed exchange rates with an implicit Gold Standard in force even in third-economies really meant capital movements in most economies could not be liberalised. Balance of Payments targeting was essential to exchange rate defence, meaning controls in the capital account and vigilance in relation to the current account.

    In the absence of exchange rate flexibility, economies adjusted in stop-start fashion, alternating between inflationary and recessionary phases that tended to accentuate the business cycle. The attempts to run quasi-fixed exchange rates in the 70s and 80s – really, an attempt to re-run Bretton Woods without a Gold-backed international Reserve – inevitably failed. Eventually, monetary liberalisation would prevail. This cannot be undone now.

    On reflection, it’s surprising that Keynes, who helped design Bretton Woods, went along with a system premised on Gold Convertibility. He knew from the Depression this would fail. Bretton Woods was an attempt to reconstruct pre-Depression orthodoxy and was absolutely bound to fail.

  23. Briefly, you have mentioned you have been homeless a number of times. I’m wondering why you have not applied your brilliant knowledge of economics to your own personal circumstances every now and then?

  24. Confessions says:
    Thursday, August 29, 2019 at 11:10 pm
    briefly:

    Simply bringing out the Democrat vote isn’t going to be enough. And plenty of analysts have pointed to Republican voters staying home in the mid terms, but you can bet they’ll be out in force in 2020 to vote for Trump.

    Democrats need a presidential candidate who can appeal to Republicans antsy about their party under Trump. Especially those in those swing states which matter to the electoral college. I just don’t believe that Elizabeth Warren is that candidate.

    I think this is not quite right. Republican turnout was elevated in the Mid-terms, but did not match the escalation in the Democrat vote, which was huge.

    In contests where partisan choices were deliberately under-stated by the Democrats their candidates failed in the mid-terms. In contests where partisanship was elevated the Democrats did well. The idea that the Democrats can seduce usually-highly-partisan Republicans is wrong. The most highly partisan POTUS in history will mobilise the Republican vote. The Democrats will win by engaging Democratic-leaning ad Pro-Dem Independent voters. These voters easily outnumber Republicans. The challenge is to get them to vote. The example from 2018 is they will vote for visibly Democratic candidates who conspicuously contrast with Trump.

  25. Trump’s war on the environment continues. And once again, this is a rollback nobody has seemingly asked for, yet allows Orange Crush to reverse an Obama era regulation for the simple reason of being able to do so.

    The Environmental Protection Agency is set to announce Thursday that it will loosen federal rules on methane, a powerful greenhouse gas linked to climate change, according to two senior administration officials.

    The proposed rule will reverse standards enacted under former president Barack Obama that require oil and gas operations to install controls on their operations to curb the release of methane at the well head and in their transmission equipment, including pipelines, processing and storage facilities.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/08/29/trump-administration-reverse-limits-methane-powerful-greenhouse-gas/

  26. EDIT – explanatory quotation

    briefly:

    On reflection, it’s surprising that Keynes, who helped design Bretton Woods, went along with a system premised on Gold Convertibility. He knew from the Depression this would fail. Bretton Woods was an attempt to reconstruct pre-Depression orthodoxy and was absolutely bound to fail.

    In the original BW proposal, reserves were in "bancor". Bancor could be purchased with gold, but were not then convertible back to gold.

    A reverse Gold standard.

  29. On reflection, it’s surprising that Keynes, who helped design Bretton Woods, went along with a system premised on Gold Convertibility. He knew from the Depression this would fail. Bretton Woods was an attempt to reconstruct pre-Depression orthodoxy and was absolutely bound to fail.

    Yes, but basically every prediction he made about BW and its inevitable failure came to fruition.

    How far are we from a Bancor? A useful role for the cryptos?

  30. nath says:
    Thursday, August 29, 2019 at 11:21 pm

    Briefly, you have mentioned you have been homeless a number of times. I’m wondering why you have not applied your brilliant knowledge of economics to your own personal circumstances every now and then?

    Illness. Crimes. Tragedies. Mostly illness. I have been very unwell several times during my life. My former wife has also been profoundly unwell nearly all her life. Illness can be very debilitating and demoralising. The effects of illness have included financial hardship. I work a lot now but have very low earnings. I will die without any assets and will probably have to work until that day comes.

  31. briefly:

    Democrat voters flocked to the polls in record numbers in 2018, but with Trump on the ballot Republicans will do the same in 2020.

  33. nath:

    Briefly, you have mentioned you have been homeless a number of times. I’m wondering why you have not applied your brilliant knowledge of economics to your own personal circumstances every now and then?

    There are some people who insist on giving away any wealth they accumulate, leaving them exposed…

  35. Confessions says:
    Thursday, August 29, 2019 at 11:28 pm
    briefly:

    Democrat voters flocked to the polls in record numbers in 2018, but with Trump on the ballot Republicans will do the same in 2020.

    The Republican turnout in 2018 was also huge. But it was surmounted by the Democratic turnout. The same thing should occur next year.

  36. Like it or not, the only thing that is going to “get out the vote” for the Dems is voting against Trump.

    This is true, but the election will be won in those swing states. If huge numbers of Democrat voters turn up in California it isn’t going to matter much. As Rick Wilson says, 270 is the magic number required to oust Trump.

  37. E. G. Theodore
    says:
    There are some people who insist on giving away any wealth they accumulate, leaving them exposed…
    _____________________________
    I’ve never come across any person like this. I see con artists on tv making a fortune from people yet I’ve never been able to con anyone out of even ten cents.

  39. The Republican turnout in 2018 was also huge. But it was surmounted by the Democratic turnout. The same thing should occur next year.

    Trump is on the ballot so expect more Republicans to come out to vote in 2020 than whom voted in 2018.

  40. nath says:
    Thursday, August 29, 2019 at 11:21 pm
    Briefly, you have mentioned you have been homeless a number of times. I’m wondering why you have not applied your brilliant knowledge of economics to your own personal circumstances every now and then?

    Mate – pull your head in. Bad things happen to good people who have done nothing wrong or different from others all the time.

  42. Bucephalus
    says:
    Thursday, August 29, 2019 at 11:42 pm
    nath says:
    Thursday, August 29, 2019 at 11:21 pm
    Briefly, you have mentioned you have been homeless a number of times. I’m wondering why you have not applied your brilliant knowledge of economics to your own personal circumstances every now and then?
    Mate – pull your head in. Bad things happen to good people who have done nothing wrong or different from others all the time.
    __________________________
    He brings out the worst in me. I don’t know why.

  43. I think it’s his use of language. There is no doubt or uncertainty in it. He writes always from a position of superior knowledge and wisdom, ‘this is….’ etc. etc. Drives me nuts.

  46. Dandy Murray
    says:
    Friday, August 30, 2019 at 12:09 am
    Self-awareness doesn’t seem to be a particular strength either, nath.
    _________________________
    Seeing that I just successfully used self-awareness to understand why I dislike Briefly I think that your comment can be considered not only a poor attempt at wit by use of an adjunct but also incorrect.

  47. See how I used ‘can be considered’. I don’t write like a desert prophet come down from on high with tablets of holy writ to dispense.

  49. Lately I have been thinking who would make an great Labor leader, that is Penny Wong. Because like Kevin Rudd, she is a committed Christian and even Conservative Christians would at least respect her in my opinion.

    Also she is a Lesbian and of Chinese descent, which would appeal a lot to the Queer and Chinese Australian voters.

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