In through the out door

Sarah Henderson returns to parliament via a Senate vacancy and a hotly contested preselection, as Coalition MPs blow bubbles on electoral “reform”.

Two brief news items to relate on Australian matters, as well as which we have the latest of Adrian Beaumont’s increasingly regular updates on the constitutional mess that is Brexit.

Sarah Henderson, who held the seat of Corangamite for the Liberals from 2013 until her defeat in May, will return to parliament today after winning preselection to fill Mitch Fifield’s Victorian Senate vacancy. This follows her 234-197 win in a party vote held on Saturday over Greg Mirabella, a Wangaratta farmer and the husband of former Indi MP Sophie Mirabella. After initial expectations that Henderson was all but assured of the spot, Mirabella’s campaign reportedly gathered steam in the lead-up to Saturday’s vote, resulting in a late flurry of public backing for Henderson from Scott Morrison, Josh Frydenberg, Jeff Kennett, Michael Kroger and Michael Sukkar.

Also, The Australian reports Queensland Liberal Senator James McGrath will push for the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, of which he is the chair, to consider abolishing proportional representation in the Senate and replacing it with a system in which each state is broken down into six provinces, each returning a single member at each half-Senate election – very much like the systems that prevailed in the state upper houses of Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia in the bad old days before the advent of proportional representation.

Ostensibly motivated by a desire to better represent the regions, such a system would result in a Senate dominated as much as the House of Representatives by the major parties, at a time of ongoing erosion in public support for them. The Australian’s report further quotes Nationals Senator Perin Davey advocating the equally appalling idea of rural vote weighting for the House. The kindest thing that can be said about both proposals is that they are not going to happen, although the latter would at least give the High Court an opportunity to take a stand for democracy by striking it down.

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.

2,838 comments on “In through the out door”

Comments Page 53 of 57
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  2. guytaur @ #2589 Tuesday, September 17th, 2019 – 1:21 pm

    @MikeySlezak tweets

    Next year, Australia is required to update its Paris commitment targets. They must “represent a progression over time” and reflect our “highest possible ambition”. Given that, I wonder what statements we’ll get from the government next week at the UN Climate Action Summit.

    I believe the government is going to take both Black Caviar and Winx along, to demonstrate the “canter” 🙂

  3. Rex Douglas:

    [‘The likes of Bolt et al will work towards replacing him with someone they deem appropriate, which I don’t think they feel ScoMo is.’]

    Dutton wants his job. The leaks will most likely start early next year. Sky would revel in Dutton as PM.

  4. Player One @ #2602 Tuesday, September 17th, 2019 – 1:32 pm

    guytaur @ #2589 Tuesday, September 17th, 2019 – 1:21 pm

    @MikeySlezak tweets

    Next year, Australia is required to update its Paris commitment targets. They must “represent a progression over time” and reflect our “highest possible ambition”. Given that, I wonder what statements we’ll get from the government next week at the UN Climate Action Summit.

    I believe the government is going to take both Black Caviar and Winx along, to demonstrate the “canter” 🙂

    You call that a horse’s arse said the minister for next year’s imaginary water —-

  5. Douglas and Milko @ #2597 Tuesday, September 17th, 2019 – 1:31 pm

    Hmm – I still think you would need many algorithms to do the job properly. But maybe these are better termed functions.

    Yes. The collection of functions or sub-algorithms or whatever and the specific steps needed to use them to accurately assess a debt would still collectively be a single algorithm.

    Inaccurate as the government’s current robodebt algorithm is, I doubt it’s implemented as a single monolithic function. But then again, with government-managed IT projects, who knows?

  6. Both Doyley.

    I have never heard someone say how grateful they are for being part of a class action.

    It is recognised that such actions operate so that class members do not have to do anything other than sign up. Their fate then falls to persons with conflicted interests – funders who what a cut of the class members entitlement and lawyers who are advising both funder and member.

    Normally the entitlement is compromised and then carved up between lawyer, member and funder.

    There is often expensive litigation as to the carving up method involving other parties getting involved. The member’s return is meagre.

    If there is an arguable case about unjust enrichment just pick a few of the class and litigate the principle.

  7. Robodebt gives the impression of an IT project that was implemented with insufficient testing. There was likely enormous pressure to make a target date, a date that was determined by political considerations rather than the amount time required for adequate testing.

  10. Having working in Commonwealth IT for decades let me say its entirely possible robodebt was implemented with out any proper IT expertise at all, local or otherwise. I have been involved in clean up crisis projects where many millions were wasted by a business area who went against and around IT expertise. At times even with a ministers blessing. It’s impossible to over estimate the stupidity behind Robodebt IMHO.

  11. Re. Sidoti:

    They always say this:

    [“I deny any allegations of wrongdoing. I have no undeclared conflicts of interest or benefits. I comply with the ministerial code of conduct. It is a privilege to represent the people of NSW and I look forward to having my name cleared.”]

  12. ar

    Inaccurate as the government’s current robodebt algorithm is, I doubt it’s implemented as a single monolithic function. But then again, with government-managed IT projects, who knows?

    It was of course a joke – anything other than Green Labor wars for a while 🙂

    But, you may be onto something – spaghetti code written in COBOL? I head 75 year old COBOL programers will work for beer money these days.

  14. COBOL!?

    From wiki :

    “COBOL has been criticized throughout its life, for its verbosity, design process, and poor support for structured programming. These weaknesses result in monolithic and, though intended to be English-like, not easily comprehensible and verbose programs.”

    Hmmm…

  15. Steve777
    That the robodebt process is wrong is a feature not a bug. It is designed that way, to extract money by deception from vulnerable people.

  17. Many years ago, tongue-in-cheeky, I said to an American at a conference workshop

    ‘So, what did we do before algorithms?’
    ‘We winged it’ he quipped with a wry smile.

    Which is exactly what these cruel bastards are doing.

  18. Dandy Murray @ #2614 Tuesday, September 17th, 2019 – 2:02 pm

    “COBOL has been criticized throughout its life, for its verbosity, design process, and poor support for structured programming. These weaknesses result in monolithic and, though intended to be English-like, not easily comprehensible and verbose programs.”

    Sounds like the ideal language for writing Labor policy documents! 🙂

  22. If there is an arguable case about unjust enrichment just pick a few of the class and litigate the principle.

    Yes, but the Commonwealth has been settling and/or conceding in individual cases, hasn’t it?

    I also read they’d been reducing, say, $20,000 debts to just $1.00 presumably to avoid the facts of the alleged debt, but uphold the principle of the Robodebt system. The principle remains officially unchallenged and the debtor effectively wins his case with a sigh of relief that it’s all over.

  24. Terminator says:
    Tuesday, September 17, 2019 at 1:53 pm
    Having working in Commonwealth IT for decades let me say its entirely possible robodebt was implemented with out any proper IT expertise at all, local or otherwise. I have been involved in clean up crisis projects where many millions were wasted by a business area who went against and around IT expertise. At times even with a ministers blessing. It’s impossible to over estimate the stupidity behind Robodebt IMHO.

    _____________________________________

    What you are saying might be true – but the fact of the brutal implementation and pursuit through debt collection agencies and the unwillingness to revisit the corrupt principle at its heart (which is that an annual taxable income implies overpayment of benefits paid on the basis of meeting eligibility in each fortnight).

    There is nothing that the banks did that even approaches robodebt for its moral (and possibly criminal) corruption.

  27. Robocop is not an IT problem. IT problems can be fixed.
    It is an ideological problem. Ideological problems cannot be fixed.
    Except for kicking the ideologues out of the House.

  29. mundo:

    This may lift your spirits:

    [‘Albanese hails ‘turning point.

    Labor’s caucus meeting lacked the fireworks of last week’s, when Senator Kim Carr voiced his worry that the opposition was “capitulating” to the government too often. There were no such debates this time.
    The caucus reaffirmed its opposition to mandatory sentencing, saying it actually made it more difficult to convict defendants.

    Labor also confirmed it would oppose the drug testing trial for welfare recipients, and seek “substantial amendments” to the expansion of the cashless debit card into the Northern Territory and Cape York.

    Anthony Albanese focused his remarks to caucus on Scott Morrison’s claim on Friday that he had not referred to former senator Sam Dastyari as “Shanghai Sam”.”This weekend has been a turning point,” the Labor leader said.

    “We have seen, around the world, right-wing leaders denying clear facts. Even their own words. Over the weekend we saw that did not work in Australia.

    “One of the reasons the PM didn’t get away with it is the discipline of our caucus.”He said Mr Morrison’s assertion that criticism of Gladys Liu was an attack on all Chinese-Australians was “a massive overreach”.]

  30. shellbell says:
    Tuesday, September 17, 2019 at 1:42 pm
    Both Doyley.

    I have never heard someone say how grateful they are for being part of a class action.

    It is recognised that such actions operate so that class members do not have to do anything other than sign up. Their fate then falls to persons with conflicted interests – funders who what a cut of the class members entitlement and lawyers who are advising both funder and member.

    Normally the entitlement is compromised and then carved up between lawyer, member and funder.

    There is often expensive litigation as to the carving up method involving other parties getting involved. The member’s return is meagre.

    If there is an arguable case about unjust enrichment just pick a few of the class and litigate the principle.

    _______________________________________

    Usually this would be a sound argument, but in this case the plaintiffs have absolutely nothing to lose as every time Centrelink ‘concedes’ by reducing the amount ‘owing’ there is just more heartache for the poor bastards who have copped it.

    At the moment the money being ripped off former Centrelink recipients is being used to fund mates of the government like Paladin and Indue to the tune of a billion dollars or more, with anything else being used to create a fake budget surplus. If the money is not going where it is really needed – to our schools, hospitals and people in real and desperate need – I’d rather it go to Gordon and the funders than the spivs who have had massive returns on their donations to the Liberal Party and the National Party.

  35. Good question from Marles.

    I know people who have parents still waiting for home care packages 12 months after being assessed.

    This goes to credibility of ScoMo and it WILL catch up with him.

  36. The debate emphasises the importance of the funding model for the class action if a litigation funder is engaged. The litigation funders’ money is paid out of the entitlement, not out of some separate sum which the government has to pay.

    If those out of pocket are recovering all their money or reducing all their debt by pushing against an open door, why is a funder needed who will clip the ticket as to 25% of thereabouts.

    Crowd fund it.

  37. https://twitter.com/MikeCarlton01/status/1173506647257280512?s=20

    Mike Carlton
    @MikeCarlton01
    They’re getting worse at Nine, aren’t they. This man is NOT the “face of the welfare debate.” He’s just one wretched sucker conned into appearing on television. I wonder what they paid him.

    I’m acquainted with several individuals who are on Newstart who also consume significant amounts of illicit drugs, using their dole money to finance it. They go without food if necessary. There is ALWAYS a way. And I’m not just talking about toking on the odd reefer or two, either. At least two are rehab drop-outs, one for the third time.

    Many of their friends and associates are doing the same thing.

    Let’s not fall into the trap of sanctifying Newstart recipients by turning them into The Noble Poor, all of whom are aching for a job. Some are. Some aren’t. Most are somewhere in the middle.

    The REAL question is whether cancelling their dole money upon repeated failure of the drugs test will get them off the drugs, detoxed and into rehab, or turn them to crime to serve their habit.

    For a start rehab clinics are in ACUTELY short supply. You’d probably have to increase facilities (residential, full-time, long term – i.e. months – or it’s pointless) by an order of magnitude, that is, 10x, maybe more.

    This means BILLIONS, not the paltry millions Morrison is offering. Being able to solve drug addiction for a cost roughly equal to a dollar per head of population is Pollyanna-ism and blatant ScoMo horseshit at its most cynical.

    As is his wedge argument that we’ll never know if it works unless we try. Some things you DO know, right from their idiotic conception stage. Increasing poverty and then employing conscription into non-existent drug rehab facilities in order to cure a nation’s drug problem will NEVER EVER work. NEVER. EVER.

    To take it to an extreme, I guess ScoMo could have strike-3 drug test failees executed by firing squad. That WOULD solve the drug problem, but would create other problems.

    In other words, your solution has got to be the right solution, in a greater and wider context than the front page of the Daily Telegraph or second-lead item on A Current Affair. The solution has to be practical, accessible, functional and should not cause more problems than it solves.

    As a minimum.

  38. For the logophiles.

    Idiot.

    One from the BK morning read list was The Conversation’s Predatory climate deniers are a threat to our children:

    In the past, many of us have tolerated such pronouncements as the utterings of idiots – in the true, original Greek meaning of the word as one interested only in their own business. But the climate crisis has now grown so severe that the actions of the denialists have turned predatory: they are now an immediate threat to our children.

    which hyperlinked me into the good read in the New York Times – Trump and the True Meaning of Idiot.

    In ancient Greek society, an idiotes was a layperson who lacked professional skills. The idiot contributed nothing to public life or the common good. His existence depended on the skill and labor of others; he was a leech sucking the lifeblood from the social body. Related to this, idiocy (from the root idios, “one’s own”) was the state of a private or self-centered person. This contrasted with the status of the public citizen, or polites, such that to be an idiot was to be withdrawn, isolated and selfish, to not participate in the public, political life of the city-state. In Greek society, the condition of idiocy was seen as peculiar and strange (a meaning that is retained in the English word “idiosyncratic”); thus “idiot” was a term of reproach and disdain.

    It’s quite a good read.

    https://theconversation.com/the-gloves-are-off-predatory-climate-deniers-are-a-threat-to-our-children-123594
    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/12/opinion/trump-and-the-true-meaning-of-idiot.html

  39. The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.

    – Computer Science pioneer Edsger W. Dijkstra

  40. GG:

    Flannery points out that his twenty years of activism on Climate Change has been a failure. Yet, he recommends the continuation of the same or similar tactics by others.

    Hmm!

    Prof. Flannery’s principal interest in anything is always to promote himself.

    Prof. Flannery was Mr Howard’s choice for Australian of the Year, and as someone once said: “He chose wisely…”

  41. How about instead of attacking each other Labor and the Greens get together with Tony Windsor and Rob Oakshott and Al Gore. Elon Musk Leonardo Di Caprio Ellen DeGeneres (International to account for cultural cringe) and produce some advertising about the cost savings and job creation of a decarbonised economy.

    You are not sacrificing you are helping the planet.
    Labor and Greens in South Australia take the lead with the Tesla Battery and how the South Australia deposit scheme have saved money jobs and the environment.

    I am sure there are many more plus the AMA on the health. I know my lungs will be better when the majority of cars are electric.

    Change the framing to why it’s good. Make Climate Change policy a win win.
    That includes destroying the increased costs of the carbon tax lie Abbott campaigned on.

    There is a lot of positive. National Security. Secure Borders. Increased economic growth. Better Health. Sell it guys. It’s your job after all.

  42. Hark. Some good news. We are capable of reversing our degradations.

    At the current momentum, scientists predict the planet’s protective shield of gas – or ozone layer as we know it – will be completely healed as far as some regions of the planet are concerned, by the 2030’s, the UN’s environmental agency (UNEP) revealed on Monday.

    The recognition of this success comes on World Ozone Day, marked 16 September. This year celebrates “32 Years and Healing”; a commemoration of the international commitment to protect the ozone later and the climate under the historic Montreal Protocol, which has led to the phase-out of 99 per cent of ozone-depleting chemicals in refrigerators, air-conditioners and other consumer products.

    Since 2000, parts of the ozone layer have recovered at a rate of 1-3 per cent every ten years, the latest Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion estimates. At projected rates the “Northern Hemisphere and mid-latitude ozone will heal completely by the 2030’s”, UNEP said, with the Southern Hemisphere repaired by the 2050’s, and Polar Regions in the following decade.

    https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/09/1046452?utm_source=UN+News+-+Newsletter&utm_campaign=aa69ed1d72-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_09_17_12_00&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fdbf1af606-aa69ed1d72-107075706

  46. Mavis Davis:

    Iran shot down a US drone and was most likely responsible for the Saudi drone attacks. It almost seems like they’re trying to draw the US into war. Iran’s strategy is difficult to fathom.

    Mr Putin wants Europe dependent on Russian petroleum and conflagration in the ME virtually ensures that.

    Same reason is behind the anti-Qatar stuff (Qatar is the main alternative source of gas)

    Same reason us behind the Syria stuff (Qatar gas to Europe needs to go via pipeline through Syria)

  47. Player One:

    E. G. Theodore @ #2640 Tuesday, September 17th, 2019 – 2:52 pm:

    Prof. Flannery’s principal interest in anything is always to promote himself.

    Prof. Flannery was Mr Howard’s choice for Australian of the Year, and as someone once said: “He chose wisely…”

    Ad hominem arguments are always so effective, aren’t they?

    I just can’t for the life of me understand why people don’t use them more often!

    How well do you know Prof Flannery?

    Were you working at UofA when he was running the SA Museum?

  48. C@tmomma @ #2645 Tuesday, September 17th, 2019 – 3:02 pm

    NSW Minister John Sidoti has stood down.

    Mr Sidoti has been linked to a $1,750 political donation the Liberal Party received from Chinese property developer Ming Shang in 2015 — a donation the Liberal Party handed back last week.

    Mr Ming’s firm is building $70 million worth of residential towers in Rouse Hill, near the newly completed Metro West train line.

    Mr Sidoti — who was parliamentary secretary of planning at the time — has declared a 10 per cent interest in the Rouse Hill development through a family company called JAFS Investment Trust.

    The Minster also faced allegations last week over his role in the approval of an access road for the development.

    ABC News online

  49. EGT

    Self promoting or not. Is Flannery wrong on his facts or this just a drive by comment to impugn his argument?

    Edit: I suspect Flannery is less into self promotion than Alan Jones as an example.

  50. Good questions from Labor in QT re social services.

    Questions like these hit home with voters.

    But Labor need to run these questions in 10 second commercials on tv and radio for it to be broadly effective.

    They have to chip away at ScoMo’s credibility bit by bit….

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