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”

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  1. taylormade @ #296 Thursday, September 12th, 2019 – 5:40 pm

    The posters stating Liu is gone seem to be the same ones who predicted labor would win the election.
    Move on folks, nothing to see here.

    So why did she fail to mention membership of the organisations of Chinese influence when she filled out her Liberal Party nomination form? But she didn’t forget umpty other organisations like the Box Hill Chess Club ?

  2. ‘Boerwar says:
    Thursday, September 12, 2019 at 5:50 pm

    Only 21 years to go and the Greens will have saved us from global warming and Ms Liu.

  3. mundo
    Good pick up. If Ms Liu is not removed it will be because the Government did not remove Ms Liu. There is nothing that Di Natale can do about that.

  4. Socrates says:
    Thursday, September 12, 2019 at 10:58 am

    The ABC has put up this refreshingly uncensored factcheck confirming that Renewable power plus storage is now cheaper than new coal. ….. Even if global warming did not exist as an issue, we should be closing down coal power on economic grounds. This highlights how badly energy policy has failed.

    The information on renewables is not evidence that energy policy has failed. It is evidence that energy policy has been working. Coal power is being closed down.

    A result of this is that demand for coal is falling and this will lead to mine closures. The question is not whether or not extraction will cease. The question is what we will do to plan for and enable economic and social transition for the workers who will lose their jobs. These workers will lose twice from global warming. They will experience the same losses as the rest of the population. In addition, these workers, their families and their communities will carry the burden of adjustment from the loss of their industries.

  5. Kimberley Kitching @kimbakit
    ·
    6m
    Liberal whistleblowers reveal Gladys Liu boasted of raising more than $1 million from a secretive network of donors for the Liberal party.

    Secret party documents have been given to the ABC by Liberals who think she is unfit to be in Parliament.

  6. Littleproud
    “I’m just a poor humble bloke with a Year 12 education but I’m prepared to accept what our scientists are telling us”.
    Can’t we get a better standard of person to run Australia?

  7. briefly @ #314 Thursday, September 12th, 2019 – 5:54 pm

    A result of this is that demand for coal is falling and this will lead to mine closures.

    My goodness, you are just unbelievable on this issue. Let’s just look at some facts, shall we?

    https://theconversation.com/explaining-the-increase-in-coal-consumption-worldwide-111045

    https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/energy-outlook/bp-energy-outlook-2019.pdf

    The forecast for worldwide demand is actually quite flat. It is not expected to decline at all in the short term – at least not under “business as usual” scenarios. The longer term view is a slightly more optimistic – a 10% decline by 2040.

    However, if you can be bothered to read that last link, it points out that the only significant decline in coal will have to be driven by regulation – in particular, the increase in carbon pricing.

    It is not going to happen by itself.

  8. Senator Penny Wong @SenatorWong
    ·
    1m
    Scott Morrison is playing clever tricks on race. He is hiding behind the entire Chinese Australian community to avoid saying why he has ignored warnings from our national security agencies.

  9. In other news…

    Clearly the West Coast Eagles have not learnt from the Ben Cousins saga
    https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/rioli-provisionally-banned-under-anti-doping-code-20190912-p52qr5.html

    The AFL are clearly useless…unable to deal with a repeat offender (GWS’s Greene) with a history of utter violence and thuggery on the field…. and now yet another player caught re supplements.

    Let’s be honest… most AFL players would be on some ‘enhancement’ program perhaps not the same as the Essendon program (this football club should have been kicked out of the AFL and shut down) but still..

    Disgraceful.

  10. Morrison accused Labor of mudslinging, and suggested the opposition was “casting a smear on Chinese Australians.”

    “[Shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus] should take a good hard look at himself and he should have a good hard look at the 1.2 million Australians who will see exactly what he is doing to Australians of Chinese descent,” the prime minister said.

    “Just because someone was born in China doesn’t make them disloyal.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/sep/12/scott-morrison-attacks-on-gladys-liu-grubby-undertone

    The Liberals did the same projection thing with Josh, claiming that demands for him to prove he wasn’t a dual citizen were somehow anti-semitic.

  11. There are around twenty or so potential S44 targets in the Reps and in the Senate.

    Singling out the sole Jew for a bit of the old S44 rogering might not be anti-semitic but, by Christ, it LOOKS anti-semitic.

  12. One of the things that crippled the Gillard prime ministership was the lengths she went to to prop up her Government by defending various unsavouries.

    Now it is Morrison’s turn.

  13. A result of this is that demand for coal is falling and this will lead to mine closures.

    And yet it is still imperative that governments permit the Galilee basin’s enormous coal reserves to be extracted and put into the atmosphere.

    Because somehow extracting and burning this coal makes no difference. Through the virtuous machinations of the energy market, every ton of coal extracted and burned from the Adani mine will somehow cause its own perfect offset, by reducing the amount of coal extracted and burned from some other mine by an identical amount.

    Or at least that’s the literal argument one can discern behind all the extraction/combusion demand/supply sophistry.

  14. Boerwar:

    I suspect that one of the problems is that the Greens are urbs and simply don’t get the realities of how food gets into shops, where the water in their taps came from, how the power got into their plugs, and where their shit comes out of the sewers.

    You only suspect it? After all these years?

  15. Watermelon @ #333 Thursday, September 12th, 2019 – 6:50 pm

    Because somehow extracting and burning this coal makes no difference. Through the virtuous machinations of the energy market, every ton of coal extracted and burned from the Adani mine will somehow cause its own perfect offset, by reducing the amount of coal extracted and burned from some other mine by an identical amount.

    I think you are missing the nuance of briefly’s argument: Australian Coal is better than other coal, so each tonne of Australian coal extracted means a tonne and a bit* of that dodgy inferior overseas coal doesn’t need to be extracted, thereby saving the planet!

    * that’s a metric bit, of course, equivalent to 2.2 times one of the older imperial bits.

  16. Jonathan Green @GreenJ
    ·
    12m
    The ‘Liu’s questioning is somehow racist and will discourage minorites’ line is such a solid example of journalism being led by the nose.
    Funding, influence, shadowy networks … not to mention AEC color schemes … there seem to be some pretty legitimate lines of inquiry.

  17. I met John Sidoti when handing out how-to-votes (for Labor, with Vote1Julia organizing) at Concord Public School, Sydney, a thousand years ago.

    Sidoti appeared to be just as spivvy then as he does now.

  18. The “unsavouries” defended by Julia Gillard.

    – Peter Slipper, who committed his ‘unsavoury’ actions as an LNP member. He had been protected by the LNP for years / decades. Meanwhile, LNP operatives broke into his office and stole documents to gather evidence. His misdeeds were minor and as it turned out were within the rules. Had he not defected, he might still be LNP member for Fisher.

    – Craig Thomson, had he been a Liberal and his misdeeds were committed as a company director or executive before entering parliament, would have got away with it. If anything ever got out, it would have been smothered. The Noise Machine would have remained silent.

    By the way, all those CBD establishments don’t make their money from office workers ducking in at lunch time and paying cash. It’s corporate credit cards and expense accounts, shareholder funds. Plus the occasional State or Commonwealth Government account, no doubt, likely a few Parliamentary and Ministerial ones.

  19. Bushfire Bill says:
    Thursday, September 12, 2019 at 7:10 pm
    I met John Sidoti when handing out how-to-votes (for Labor, with Vote1Julia organizing) at Concord Public School, Sydney, a thousand years ago.

    He appeared to be just as spivvy then as he does now.
    _______________________________
    No doubt he was a little “too foreign looking” for your liking.

    Nostalgia for the whitebread days of yore, eh?

  20. Wow! Bolt’s really getting stuck into Morrison tonight. The fact is, as far as can be reasonably ascertained, Turnbull was warned by ASIO not to been seen with Lui, her associates. Morrison failed to adhere to ASIO’s advice. He’s dug himself into a sinkhole which will prove very hard to extract himself. He went for the race card, which shows his appalling political judgment. Maybe Murdoch’s not happy with him(?).

  21. “The most the Liberals can do is expel Liu from the party – they can’t make her resign her seat.”

    They could refuse to accept her “tainted” vote.

  22. Tao de Haas @TaodeHaas
    ·
    10m
    The Happy Clapper Slogan Bogan is playing the race card. How vile is that?! So someone who’s born overseas should be immune from being asked questions about their overseas alliances and affiliations? How ridiculous is that?! #auspol


  23. Jack the Insider
    @JacktheInsider
    ·
    8m
    As keeper of Australian political nicknames, sobriquets and monikers, I hereby decree Gladys Liu will henceforth be known as Guangzhou Gladys.’

  24. P1 @ 7.02
    Not that it is critical to your spurious argument, but to assert that a metric tonne is 2.2 times that of the old imperial ton is totally wrong. I guess you have confused kips with tons? In any case a metric tonne is pretty close to an imperial ton.
    Ie approx 2205: 2240.

  25. an analogy on climate change ……. God gifted man the earth and also gave him stewardship to nurture and protect it for the good of all mankind and which included the stewardship over all flora and fauna which exists on the earth and the sea. He gave him free will to carry out his (God’s) expectations.
    We now know the result of this gifting.
    Analogy:
    Joe Blow gifts his Son Oscar a house on his 21st birthday for which he paid a great deal of money. He told his Son “I will hand you the title deeds and all I expect of you is that you treat the house with respect, maintain it properly and it will last you for a very long time.” After a while Oscar starts having parties in the house with his hooligan mates and the house begins to deteriorate. Dad calls around for a visit every now and then and notices that the house is lacking care and is quickly becoming unliveable from damage and neglect.
    Dad is mortified. He said ” Oscar you have let me down. I gave you a beautiful house to live in and and enjoy and which I paid a lot of money for and now it is next to worthless. Why did you let this happen?” Oscar replied “You gave me the house unconditionly and said that it is mine to enjoy. My mates were bringing the grog and stuff around so I let them live here and we partied all the time. I didn’t notice the damage being done.” Anyway the house is in my name so I can do what I like”

    Eventually the house is condemned by the local council and is demolished. Oscar is homeless and Joe wont bail him out.

    I believe we are heading in the same direction as Oscar except that although things are moving fast it is not too late for us to wake up. We have already destroyed about 25% of the planet including the extinction of a big percentage of flora and fauna, pollution of our rivers and poisoning of the atmosphere. If things keep going the way they are we will not have a planet to live on in the
    forseeable future. We have to wake up before it is too late regardless of our religious or other beliefs.

    End of story!

    Disclaimer- I am not a greenie. I am 75 years old and am bloody concerned about what we are leaving our kids and grand kids by ignoring the laws of nature.

  26. Lars wrote (of my comment on Sidoti):

    No doubt he was a little “too foreign looking” for your liking.

    Nostalgia for the whitebread days of yore, eh?

    What IS wrong with you right wing trolls, that you accuse anyone who disagrees with you of being racists?

    The truth is that those of the Right are historically the greatest racists of all. Everyone knows it. Why bother with all the projection and the deflection? Face up to your proud heritage, Lars. Embrace it.

    Re. “Days of yore”, I was at school with Lebs, Balts, Yugos, Irish, Aussies, Chinese, Poms and (it being a nominally Catholic school) many, many Italians (including, coincidentally, one “John Sidoti”).

    As far as I can recall there was zero racism, ethnic name-calling or anything else nasty. We all just got along. So your allegation that “in days if yore” it was all “white bread” is patently false, and pathetically uninformed.

    How old ARE you? 16? You clearly have no idea of what you’re talking about.

    The Liu Problem concerns an allegation that the Liberal Party has knowingly allowed an agent of a foreign government to not only join the party, not only obtain preselection, but to be personally and publicly celebrated by the Prime Minister of Australia, despite specific warnings to the contrary.

    The response so far has been to feign “offence”, level desperate accusations of “racism” and, most pathetic of all, to invoke poor production values regarding a train wreck interview, where the subject, Ms Liu, said one thing (to a friendly interviewer, at that) and then, the very next day, 180 degrees contradicted herself.

    Now THERE’S yer problem, Lars, not fake news, nor totally cynical allegations of racism.

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