Forever blowing bubbles

More reform talk, this time involving suggestions MPs should be prevented from defecting from the parties for which they were elected.

Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters chair James McGrath has floated another reform bubble, this time proposing that parliamentarians should be prevented from resigning from their parties under pain of either facing a by-election or being replaced by the nominee of the party for which they were elected. The Australian helpfully summarises recent situations where this would have applied: “Jacqui Lambie and Glenn Lazarus from the Palmer United Party, Cory Bernardi and Julia Banks from the Liberal Party, Fraser Anning and Rod Culleton from One Nation and Steve Martin from the Jacqui Lambie Network”. University of New South Wales constitutional law expert George Williams is quoted noting potential constitutional issues, particularly in relation to the lower house.

The proposal brings to mind the passage in New Zealand last year of what is colloquially known as the “waka jumping bill”, insisted upon by Winston Peters of New Zealand First as part of his coalition agreement with Labour after the 2017 election. This requires a constituency MP who quits their party to face a by-election, while party list MPs must vacate their seats and have them filled by the next candidate along from the list at the election. The move was poorly received by academics and the country’s Human Rights Commissioner, as it effectively gives party leaders the ability to dispense with troublemakers. It was also noted that Peters himself broke away from the National Party to form New Zealand First in 1990, but changed his tune after a split in his own party in 1998. However, the McGrath proposal would seem to be quite a lot less pernicious in that it would only apply to those who leave their parties of their own volition.

In other news, I had a paywalled article in Crikey on Tuesday regarding the YouGov methodological overhaul that was discussed here on Sunday, which said things like this:

Of course, transparency alone will not be sufficient for the industry to recover the strong reputation it held until quite recently. That will require runs on the board in the form of more-or-less accurate pre-election polls, for which no opportunity will emerge until the Queensland state election still over a year away. It’s far from certain that YouGov will prove able to get better results by dropping the telephone component of its polling, notwithstanding that phone polling is less conducive to the kind of detailed demographic parsing that it apparently has in mind. Nonetheless, the movements the pollster records over time within demographic and geographic sub-samples will almost certainly offer insights into the shifting sands of public opinion, even if skepticism will remain as to how it sees the numbers combining in aggregate.

I’m not sure when exactly we will see the fruits of YouGov’s approach, but we’re due some sort of Newspoll result on Sunday or Monday, and the fortnightly Essential Research falls due on Tuesday – we’re still waiting for the latter to resume voting intention, but I was told a little while ago it would happen soon.

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.

1,328 comments on “Forever blowing bubbles”

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  1. The govt is doing everything necessary. Trust your Dad. And trust in Jesus.

    GO BACK TO SLEEP, AUSTRALIA – YOUR GOVERNMENT IS IN CHARGE AGAIN.

    with apologies to the late Bill Hicks.

  2. Dandy

    A government working in the public interest will ensure that when residents are a net producer of electricity they get paid not billed for doing that.

    Such a government will work to ensure that there is no gouging by business to inflate network costs to pretend there is a net loss in producing the electricity

  4. Ahem. I think it’s time I made it clear that I’m not against anyone who has a genuine spiritual belief and does no harm, but Morrison’s hypocrisy, evidenced by the gaping chasm between his first speech to the HoR and his subsequent decisions as a Minister, gives me permission to criticise him.

    Ian Farquhar @ianbfarquhar
    ·
    8m
    Morrison has used the term “cult” to refer to climate science. Apparently he misses the fact that his Pentecostal beliefs are considered a cult by many Christian theologians, and its practices (faith healing, speaking in tongues) are not accepted as sane by most Australians.

  5. Lizzie

    As the Catholics found out reality always trumps fantasy belief. Not even the Inquisiton could stop this process.

    Morrison is losing. Its just how long before the reality overwhelms the fantasy. Its been too long already

  6. 30 Republican Senators Would Vote To Impeach Trump If Vote Was Secret

    Republican strategist Mike Murphy said that he was told by a Republican Senator that 30 Republican Senators would vote to convict Trump on impeachment if the vote was secret.

    Mike Murphy also noted that the Ukraine scandal has changed the political conventional wisdom on impeachment. It was formerly believed that Trump impeachment would help Republicans, but the Ukraine case is so easy to understand and cut and dry that if Republicans give Trump cover on this, it could cost them their seats.

    https://www.politicususa.com/2019/09/25/republican-senators-impeach-trump.html

  7. Many thanks to those who mentioned “The Looming Tower” a couple of days ago.

    I came late to the program and I keep expecting Mr. Jeff Daniels to stick his tongue on a freezing pipe and Mr. Alex Baldwin to do his Mr. D. Trump impressions.

    Class cast, script and performances.

    I have the book and will read that after the interminable current book by Dean Koontz.

    Over and out. Day release soon for a couple of hours. 😎

  9. Ukraine just threw Donald Trump all the way under the bus

    When Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy sat next to Donald Trump during a televised event in New York today, Zelenskiy wasn’t exactly in a position to accuse Trump of anything. But this evening, ABC News reported that Zelenskiy adviser Serhiy Leshchenko is saying that it was clear to everyone in the Ukrainian leadership that Trump wasn’t even willing to pick up the phone and talk to Zelenskiy unless Ukraine was willing to go along with the fake Biden scandal.

    Notably, Serhiy Leshchenko is offering to testify before Congress about the Trump-Ukraine scandal. After this latest revelation, don’t be surprised if House Democrats take him up on it, and have him testify as part of their impeachment hearings.

    https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/ukraine-bus-under-donald-trump-threw/21131/

  11. Revd Andrew Klein ( Chaplain)

    “A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reforms. It does not haggle over expenditures for armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself,
    .. and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain.”
    ~ Anatole France (1844-1924), pseudonym for Jacques Anatole Thibault

  13. Dutton is so insecure he sees danger everywhere.

    The federal government is considering challenging Australian Capital Territory laws legalising the recreational use of cannabis, with the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, describing the new laws as unconscionable.

    “I think it might be trendy for the ACT government to go down this path, and they’ll say they’re enlightened and progressive and all the rest of it,” Dutton told 2GB radio on Thursday. “But I think it’s dangerous.

    “Christian Porter is having a look at it at the moment.”

    Porter, the federal attorney general, previously indicated that the commonwealth was not weighing a legal challenge.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/sep/26/peter-dutton-cannabis-christian-porter-challenge-act-law-legalise-drugs?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

  14. Previous thread:

    When the problem transcends politics, politics no longer matters.

    Transcendental meditations will only get one so far! After that, there’s politics, as Marcus Aurelius well understood.

  15. Dandy Murray:

    Any truth to the rumour Paul Erdos refused to believe the correct solution to the Monty Hall problem? (until he constructed a simulator and ran it through a few hundred thousand times).

  16. @MsVeruca tweets

    Oh dear @ScottMorrisonMP

    It looks like your mates at the Daily Telegraph have been whipping up hysteria in children for years.

    Read this 2011 article & see that Morrison has nothing new to say under the sun.

    (spotted by @jommy_tee) #ClimateChange https://www.news.com.au/national/australian-kids-are-living-in-climate-of-fear/news-story/df4e12c3bcd4d2307590d854046d3bfd https://twitter.com/MsVeruca/status/1177034040160866305/photo/1

  20. “challenging Australian Capital Territory laws legalising the recreational use of cannabis, with the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, describing the new laws as unconscionable.”

    Once a cop always a cop Lizzie

  21. Diogenes:

    Piece of paper.
    I’m hopeless with computers.

    I’m obsessed with the idea of being able to work paper-like on an iPad or such like

    Smart paper, that converts appropriate squiggles into equations, roughly drawn tables into spreadsheets etc etc.

    Not there yet. Relevantly, the Adelaide AI group is rather good at something called “visual question answering” but “visual question asking” is needed too (amongst others)…

  22. I don’t know, EGT, but it sounds like other accounts of him.

    But I did see a reverse lady and tiger problem at a conference once, where the tiger was Tiger Woods choosing doors in a hotel. Behind one was his mistress and behind the other his wife, armed with a 9-iron.

  24. This is the man who lives in his own fantasy world.

    Aaron Rupar @atrupar

    TRUMP: “So many leaders came up to me today and they said, ‘sir, what you go through, no president has ever gone through. And it’s so bad for your country.'”

  25. phoenixRED @ #107 Thursday, September 26th, 2019 – 11:20 am

    30 Republican Senators Would Vote To Impeach Trump If Vote Was Secret

    Republican strategist Mike Murphy said that he was told by a Republican Senator that 30 Republican Senators would vote to convict Trump on impeachment if the vote was secret.

    https://www.politicususa.com/2019/09/25/republican-senators-impeach-trump.html

    Don’t tell daddy? They come off sounding like children.

  26. Toy brand Mattel has launched a new line of dolls with gender-neutral clothes and hairstyles, saying that “kids don’t want their toys dictated by gender norms.”

    Barbie, the impossibly trim plastic bimbo, has been through many iterations since she hit the shelves in 1959. Since then, she’s been an astronaut, a computer engineer, a presidential candidate, and a Marine Corps Sergeant. Even in the corps, her blond hair and perfect makeup have left little girls under no illusion as to her gender.

    Coming any day now (not from Mattel) – a line of gender neutral “Dickhead Dolls”
    So lifelike its “just like looking in a mirror.”

    Question – is there no end to today’s good news ❓

  27. @cheryl_kernot tweets

    Because such fine distinction is easily lost on @abcnews – often! Captured or lazily reach for any stock footage? #auspol https://twitter.com/paul_karp/status/1176968037804589057

    @Paul_Karp tweets

    Why is @BreakfastNews illustrating a story about UN climate change report with plastics in the ocean? It may seem a small point but as PM attempts to deflect from inaction on one with action on the other worth remembering PLASTICS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. #auspol

  28. Dandy Murray @ #101 Thursday, September 26th, 2019 – 11:02 am

    You see, P1, the way that I read the article, and the AEMC and CEFC reports, is that the industry has finally realised that the only way forward is to treat customers not as a nuisance but as active power system participants.

    This work is paving the way to providing payments to customers who’s investments and actions help the grids, as much as it is opening the discussion on charging more from customers who drive higher costs through the same. Overall, this is going to be a good thing, because customers have, or will soon have, devices that can reduce hugely network costs, and significantly help to balance variable renewable supply. Plus we are doing it first in the world, with huge export potential for our innovators and technical experts.

    With the right policies in place, technologies like batteries and EVs present a great opportunity to reduce system-wide emissions and energy costs.

    But you can’t just magic-up the right policies in a technically complex system.

    What they have realized is how to tap an additional source of revenue, as well as yet another justification for raising electricity prices in a system that is already ludicrously expensive.

    Not a lot of technical complexity in that, is there?

  29. lizzie @ #125 Thursday, September 26th, 2019 – 11:46 am

    This is the man who lives in his own fantasy world.

    Aaron Rupar @atrupar

    TRUMP: “So many leaders came up to me today and they said, ‘sir, what you go through, no president has ever gone through. And it’s so bad for your country.’”

    Like Scott Morrison, Shinzo Abe, Bolsonaro, Benjamin Netanyahu. Any other sycophants I haven’t thought of?

  30. Are there many working examples of households completely off grid?
    It would seem that as technology develops, being off grid would be a increasing posdibility.

  32. @DanielAndrewsMP tweets

    The Geelong Ford factory is humming again.

    We’ve turned it into the country’s newest wind turbine assembly line.

    It’s the first time in over a decade that turbines are being manufactured in Australia.

    And as of this week, they’re at full production. https://twitter.com/DanielAndrewsMP/status/1177036102764355584/photo/1

    But best of all, they’re being built by local workers, and they’ll be maintained by them too.

    Because these jobs should belong to Victorians.

    And under our Government, they always will.

  34. Interesting to think that a territory provision can operate as a defence to a federal offence.

    [The existence of the ACT legislation was a defence if people were charged under commonwealth laws, Barr said. “My advice to everyone is that this is an evolution not a revolution,” he said.]

  36. Goll @ #131 Thursday, September 26th, 2019 – 11:55 am

    Are there many working examples of households completely off grid?
    It would seem that as technology develops, being off grid would be a increasing posdibility.

    It is relatively cheap and easy to go off-grid. Or at least it is now. Soon, the power companies will convince the government that consumers should pay them just because the grid passes their property, even if this property is unused or off-grid – the same way water and sewerage charges are currently applied (these are generally called “service availability” charges).

    Another one that is a bit more extreme, but which wouldn’t surprise me would be a “battery tax”, levied if your battery is not available for the grid to draw on whenever it wants to – kind of an involuntary “demand response” system.

    I just hope I am not giving Dandy Murray too many ideas! 🙁

  38. @samdastyari tweets

    So the mainstream position of the AUSTRALIAN media is that concern over climate change is the fault of kids… and if they just stopped being concerned everything would be ok. Right. Got it. Everything is awesome.

  39. phoenixRED @ #107 Thursday, September 26th, 2019 – 11:20 am

    30 Republican Senators Would Vote To Impeach Trump If Vote Was Secret

    Republican strategist Mike Murphy said that he was told by a Republican Senator that 30 Republican Senators would vote to convict Trump on impeachment if the vote was secret.

    https://www.politicususa.com/2019/09/25/republican-senators-impeach-trump.html

    On reflection this also sounds like misdirection on the part of Mr Murphy. He’s playing out the line to use a fishing analogy. (I don’t fish. I may have this analogy wrong.)

    Wikipedia tells me there are 53 Republican Senators. If 30 voted with the “other side” it wouldn’t take many of the “faithful 23” to stand up and say, “I voted against impeachment” before people would figure out “the Judas 30”. The 30 would be exposed as both cowardly and traitorous to the party. And if the 23 didn’t stand up then all 53 would be labelled as cowards. Lose lose for the GOP.

  40. I actually think trump’s statement is correct just not in the way he intends.

    No other president has tried to use another country against his rival and this is bad for the US.

  44. I know criticism of the ABC narks many here but their news script writer is below par.

    First when reporting Morrison’s defence of his climate policy they have him “pointing out”what Australia’s emissions are. Not stating, but using the pejorative “pointing out”.

    Then their report on uproar in the House of Commons over Johnson’s mention of Jo Cox doesn’t tell us what he actually said.

    These things aren’t accidental.

  45. Late Riser @ #15 Thursday, September 26th, 2019 – 12:15 pm

    phoenixRED @ #107 Thursday, September 26th, 2019 – 11:20 am

    30 Republican Senators Would Vote To Impeach Trump If Vote Was Secret

    Republican strategist Mike Murphy said that he was told by a Republican Senator that 30 Republican Senators would vote to convict Trump on impeachment if the vote was secret.

    https://www.politicususa.com/2019/09/25/republican-senators-impeach-trump.html

    On reflection this also sounds like misdirection on the part of Mr Murphy. He’s playing out the line to use a fishing analogy. (I don’t fish. I may have this analogy wrong.)

    Wikipedia tells me there are 53 Republican Senators. If 30 voted with the “other side” it wouldn’t take many of the “faithful 23” to stand up and say, “I voted against impeachment” before people would figure out “the Judas 30”. The 30 would be exposed as both cowardly and traitorous to the party. And if the 23 didn’t stand up then all 53 would be labelled as cowards. Lose lose for the GOP.

    Maybe it’s a shot across the bows of Trump to let him know his support in the Senate isn’t as rock solid as he thinks it is?

  46. A greenie MP taps out a single tweet which is not overtly critical of the main opposition party and this is somehow undeniable, empirical proof of a falsehood.

    Or have I misunderstood the science?

  48. For those struggling with the term ‘virtue signalling’, here is an example. This Canadian Greens partyleader was photographed holding a single use cup with a plastic straw – through the magic of photoshop, a helpful staff member altered this to a reusable cup with metal straw. So that the Greens leader could be seen to be living the rhetoric…

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/25/canadas-green-party-alters-photo-of-leader-elizabeth-may-using-single-use-cup

  49. “Maybe it’s a shot across the bows of trump to let him know his support in the Senate isn’t as rock solid as he thinks it is?”
    Could be. My thought was what fish is he trying to catch? My tentative answer was the names of “the 30”. But either way not something I’d give much chance to happening.

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