Sins of commission

Kooyong and Chisholm legal challenge latest; by-election rumblings in Isaacs; Jim Molan strikes back; and the Victorian Liberals gearing up already for federal preselections.

Possible (or possibly not) federal by-election news:

• The Australian Electoral Commission has petitioned the Federal Court to reject challenges against the federal election results in Chisholm and Kooyong. The challenges relate to Chinese-language Liberal Party signage that appeared to mimic the AEC’s branding, and advised voters that giving a first preference to the Liberal candidates was “the correct voting method”. As reported by The Guardian, the AEC argues that “the petition fails to set out at all, let alone with sufficient particularity, any facts or matters on the basis of which it might be concluded that it was likely that on polling day, electors able to read Chinese characters, upon seeing and reading the corflute, cast their vote in a manner different from what they had previously intended”. This seems rather puzzling to my mind, unless it should be taken to mean that no individuals have been identified who are ready to confirm that they were indeed so deceived. Academic electoral law expert Graeme Orr argued on Twitter that the AEC had “no need to intervene on the substance of a case where partisan litigants are well represented”.

• Talk of a by-election elsewhere in Melbourne was stimulated by Monday’s column ($) from acerbic Financial Review columnist Joe Aston, which related “positively feverish speculation” that Labor’s Shadow Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus, would shortly quit his Melbourne bayside seat of Isaacs with an eye to a position on Victoria’s Court of Appeal. Aston further reported that Dreyfus hoped to be succeeded by Fiona McLeod, the prominent barrister who gained a 6.1% swing as Labor’s candidate for Higgins in May. Dreyfus emphatically rejected such “ridiculous suggestions” in late August, saying he was “absolutely committed to serving out this term of parliament”, and again took to Twitter on Monday to say he would be “staying and fighting the next election”. Aston remains unconvinced, writing in Tuesday’s column ($) that the suggestions derived from “high-level discussions Dreyfus has held on Spring Street with everyone from Premier Daniel Andrews, former Attorney-General Martin Pakula, his successor Jill Hennessy and his caucus colleagues”, along with his “indiscreet utterances around the traps”.

Federal preselection news:

• Jim Molan has won the endorsement of both Scott Morrison and the conservative faction of the New South Wales Liberal Party to fill the Senate vacancy created by Arthur Sinodinos’s departure to become ambassador to the United States. However, the Sydney Morning Herald reports this is not dissuading rival nominee Richard Shields, former deputy state party director and Insurance Council of Australia manager, and the runner-up to Dave Sharma in last year’s keenly fought Wentworth preselection. Shields’ backers are said to include Helen Coonan, former Senator and Howard government minister, and Mark Neeham, a former state party director. Earlier reports suggested the moderate faction had been reconciled to Molan’s ascendancy by a pledge that he would only serve out the remainder of Sinodinos’s two-year term, and would not seek re-election in 2022.

• Rob Harris of The Age reports the Victorian Liberals are considering a plan to complete their preselections for the 2022 election much earlier than usual – and especially soon for Liberal-held seats. The idea in the latter case is for challengers to incumbents to declare their hands by January 15, with the matter to be wrapped up by late February or early March. This comes after the party’s administrative committee warded off threats to members ahead of the last election, most notably factional conservative Kevin Andrews in Menzies, by rubber-stamping the preselections of all incumbents, much to the displeasure of party members. Other preselections are to be held from April through to October. Also proposed is a toughening of candidate vetting procedures, after no fewer than seven candidates in Labor-held seats were disendorsed during the period of the campaign.

Self-promotion corner:

• I had a paywalled piece in Crikey yesterday which noted the stances adopted of late by James McGrath, ideological warror extraordinaire and scourge of the cockatoo, in his capacity as chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, which is presently conducting its broad-ranging inquiry into the May federal election. These include the end of proportional representation in the Senate, the notion that parliamentarians who quit their parties should be required to forfeit their seats, and — more plausibly — the need to curtail pre-poll voting.

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.

2,219 comments on “Sins of commission”

Comments Page 31 of 45
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  2. Larkin:

    In everyone there sleeps
    A sense of life lived according to love.
    To some it means the difference they could make
    By loving others, but across most it sweeps
    As all they might have done had they been loved.
    from “Faith Healing” (1960), The Whitsun Weddings

  4. I just watched The Godfather, the best movie ever made. And one of those rare things where the movie is better than the book.

  5. I just saw the announcement on the Ch9 Newsbreak of the Morrison government’s ‘$1 Billion Dam and water infrastructure package!’, as if spending $1 Billion of taxpayers’ $$ on the damn stuff will make it rain and fill ’em up.

    It’s a very biblical concept though and you can see the religious thinking that runs like a perpetual thread through this government. In this instance, ‘build it, pray, and God will fill it with water.’

    What a load of bulldust.

    And that’s all that will fill them too.

  6. C@t:

    The Coalition’s entire approach to anything environmental has for years been tinged with religiosity. Even dating back to the Howard era.

    These days however, the tinge is more like a lacquering and glazing.

  9. C@t:

    The Godfather trilogy is one of my fave movies. They managed to keep the majority of the main character casts together, and yes, Pacino and Brando were brilliant. As were Diane Keaton and Robert Duvall.

  10. Just watched the Breaking Bad sequel El Camino – the cinematography is as good as the original, storyline quirky with flash backs/forwards.

  12. The environment is a place to log, to clear and “develop” or to dig up to find profitable stuff like iron ore and coal.

    According to the Coalition.

  13. You would have thought that there would be a Newspoll tonight, before parliament returns this week. However, they seem to do them on the sly these days, so it’s hard to say.

  14. What kind of person would wear a shirt that openly suggests hanging journalists?

    The kind of person that would vote for Donald Trump.

  18. Fess, I think El Camino is solely for Breaking Bad fans – many of the characters are from the earlier series and the flashbacks assume you know the context. But it is beautifully shot.

  19. A DASH OF REALITY … FT: “China makes few concessions in trade truce with US,” by Tom Mitchell in Beijing: “In return for a series of modest concessions, most of which had been offered by President Xi Jinping’s administration in previous negotiating rounds, Donald Trump agreed to suspend another set of tariff increases originally scheduled to take effect on October 15.

    “The truce sets the stage for a series of much higher-stakes negotiations after Mr Xi and Mr Trump’s expected encounter on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Conference, scheduled for November 16-17 in Santiago, Chile, where Friday’s agreement will be finalised.

    “The two sides are still a long way from a final settlement that addresses much more contentious issues, such as Chinese government support for strategic industries and state-owned enterprises, which Mr Trump had hoped to reach before his 2020 re-election campaign kicks off in earnest. Chinese negotiators, however, believe that time is on their side and they can continue to stonewall Mr Trump and his lead negotiator, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, on any “systemic” reforms that they fear would weaken the Chinese Communist party’s grip over the world’s second-largest economy.

    “In private, Chinese officials say they are lucky Mr Trump waited a year before launching his trade assault in the spring of 2018, giving his negotiators only about 18 months to confront China before domestic political pressures would begin to hem them in. The US president wants relief for his farm-state supporters, who have borne the brunt of China’s counter-tariffs, and a soaring stock market to help boost his re-election prospects.” FT (Financial Times)

  20. Meanwhile in Syria…

    News agency Reuters reports the Kurdish-led administration in northern Syria says 785 people affiliated with I.S. have escaped the Ain Issa camp following shelling by Turkey

  24. Steve777 @ #1528 Sunday, October 13th, 2019 – 9:32 pm

    “What kind of person would wear a shirt that openly suggests hanging journalists?”

    A right-wing authoritarian: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism.

    One of their most popular virtue signals is to declare how severely they want to punish people who don’t adhere to their view of correct belief and behaviour. In Australia they mostly vote Coalition or often for right-wing fringe groups.

    In America they are uniformly White and proudly ignorant:

    https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/10/11/hes-in-the-belly-of-the-beast-229845

  25. Simon Katich @ #1516 Sunday, October 13th, 2019 – 9:06 pm

    C’mon Newspoll
    Come to me
    You know I’m waiting
    I love you endlessly

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr1j3GfJuR4

    Why in all of god’s green goodness would you care what Newspoll is?
    It’ll show most Strayans think Scrotty is wonderful and the coalition government is the best thing that happened since Johnny Howard.
    Get used to it.
    Look forward to 2028 when Labor will actually have a chance.

  30. Isle of Rocks:

    [‘Because this is a website about elections and opinion polls in Australia, and people who are interested in the topic come here to read and comment.’]

    It’s more than that, cobber. Anyway, welcome.

  35. Phew!

    Jacqui Lambie has ruled out horse-trading her vote on the Coalition’s bill to repeal provisions facilitating medical evacuation from offshore detention.

    At a doorstop ahead of the sitting fortnight, the independent senator – who is likely to have the casting vote – suggested she will vote on the merits of the bill after a Senate inquiry reports back on 18 October.

    “Tasmanians don’t want deals done over humanity,” Lambie told reporters in Canberra. “So whichever way [my vote] goes, there will be no deals done for Tasmania over this.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/oct/13/jacqui-lambie-rules-out-horse-trading-her-vote-on-bill-to-repeal-medevac

  42. ‘fess, I am more likely to believe Lambie since I found out her political adviser formerly worked at The Australia Institute.

    BTW, it looks like Gordon Sondland doesn’t want to spend time in a federal prison so he is going to rat on Trump and tell the impeachment inquiry that Trump personally told him to state that there was no quid pro quo with Ukraine!

  43. C@t:

    Sondland has given every indication he’s going to sing like a canary. Lambie gives every impression she’s gonna hold out for whatever she can get from the govt.

  45. What might happen in a world where paid work goes away?

    1. Automation is not happening at a fast pace today. Labour productivity and job churn are sluggish. They would be skyrocketing if automation were happening at a fast pace.

    2. Productive work needs to be defined much more broadly than “that which is commercially profitable”. Vast amounts of socially valuable and ecologically sustainable work need to be done. Most of it will never be commercially profitable. But the currency issuer can always pay people to do it. Public sector job creation needs to figure much more prominently in our thinking about work. Social value and ecological sustainability are the most important criteria for deciding whether someone should be paid to do something. Collectively, as a society, we get to make these decisions through democratic means.

    3. There are 15 million unemployed and hidden unemployed Americans today – this is needless suffering and it should be eradicated by public sector job creation that meets the massive unmet needs in our communities. For every social need there is a job (or several) to be done. That is the urgent challenge for today – not wringing hands about the extremely remote prospect of robots being able to match human capacity for care, empathy, kindness, manual dexterity, mobility, capacity to recognise objects and faces, and so on.

    4. People want to contribute, learn, grow, enjoy mastery experiences, cooperate with others – and paid work is one powerful way of experiencing those things. So let’s focus on making paid work better, and on ensuring quality paid work for all who want it. Most people want to work.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/world-without-work/395294/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=5da303e4594d1700014c3bf3_ta&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

  49. Grim,

    Good to hear! Hope your young family is well too.

    The story here is somewhat similar, but in a different order. Now have a permanent full time job after moving off fixed-term contracts, with a period of crazy busy sole-trader consulting in between. Moving to Brisbane in the new year, where things will probably not calm down a whole lot 🙂

  50. Dandy Murray @ #1549 Sunday, October 13th, 2019 – 8:52 pm

    Grim,

    Good to hear! Hope your young family is well too.

    The story here is somewhat similar, but in a different order. Now have a permanent full time job after moving off fixed-term contracts, with a period of crazy busy sole-trader consulting in between. Moving to Brisbane in the new year, where things will probably not calm down a whole lot 🙂

    The sole trader thing sucks. With the dirty consultancy things got big really quickly, a four week job for three FTE’s has turned truly enormous. Looking at our employee list has me shitting myself and we’ve got three more starting tomorrow.

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