Party leadership developments:
• Barnaby Joyce has announced he will contest the Nationals leadership when the party room holds its first meeting on the resumption of parliament this morning, with a view to deposing Michael McCormack, who replaced Joyce him after his resignation in February 2018. This follows the opening of the deputy leadership position after Bridget McKenzie resigned from cabinet on Sunday over her handling of grants to sports clubs while serving as Sports Minister before the election. Joyce has two confirmed supporters out of a party room of 21, most notably Matt Canavan, who also quit cabinet yesterday (while also taking the opportunity to concede a loan under the North Australia Infrastructure Facility Act, over which he has ministerial oversight, had been given to an NRL club of which he was a registered supporter). The other is Wide Bay MP Llew O’Brien, who will move the spill motion that will vacate the leadership position if it gets the required 11 votes. Sharri Markson of News Corp reports claims Joyce has precisely that many votes, but this does not seem to be the majority view: a Seven News reporter related a view that Joyce had about seven, while an unnamed Liberal MP told The Australian ($) Joyce would not get “anywhere near” winning. David Littleproud, Keith Pitt and David Gillespie will all nominate for the deputy position, with Littleproud rated the favourite.
• Richard Di Natale announced yesterday that he was quitting both the Greens leadership and would shortly leave the Senate, saying he wished to spend more time with his family. Every indication is that he will be succeeded this morning by the party’s sole member of the House of Representatives, Melbourne MP Adam Bandt. The Australian ($) reports there are “discussions under way” for Queensland Senator Larissa Waters to take on a new role as party leader in the Senate”. Di Natale will remain in parliament pending the party’s process for choosing his replacement, which is likely to take several months. There is only the vaguest of speculation at this point as to who the successor might be.
By-election news:
• It has been confirmed the Queensland state by-election for the Gold Coast state seat of Currumbin, to be vacated with the resignation of Liberal National Party member Jann Stuckey, will be held on March 28, the same day as the state’s council elections. The selection of lawyer Laura Gerber as LNP candidate has fuelled Stuckey’s attacks on the party, on the basis that she was chosen by the party’s state executive rather than a vote of local members, and that this reflected a determination for the seat to be contested by “a skirt”. Among the reasons for Stuckey’s alienation from the party is that her own favoured successor, Chris Crawford, was blocked by the party’s vetting committee last year. The LNP has held the seat since 2004, currently on a margin of 3.3%.
• The date for the Northern Territory by-election in the Darwin seat of Johnston has been set for February 29. The seat is being vacated with the retirement of Labor member Ken Vowles after a period of estrangement from the party and its leader, Chief Minister Michael Gunner. The seat will be contested by Joel Bowden for Labor; Josh Thomas for the Country Liberals; Steven Klose for the Territory Alliance, the new party associated with former CLP Chief Minister Terry Mills; and Aiya Goodrich Carttling for the Greens. Labor has held the seat since its creation in 2001, currently on a margin of 14.7%.
Preselection news:
• South Australia’s Liberals have chosen a factional moderate, Andrew McLachlan, to fill the Senate vacancy created by the retirement of Cory Bernardi. McLachlan has served in the state’s Legislative Council since 2014, and been the chamber’s President since the 2018 election. Tom Richardson of InDaily reports McLachlan won 131 out of 206 votes in the ballot of state council members to 51 for former Law Council of Australia president Morry Bailes and 24 for former state party treasurer Michael Van Dissel, both of whom are associated with the Right. Bailes’ weak showing in particular amounted to an “epic defeat” for hard right forces including Boothby MP Nicolle Flint and Barker MP Tony Pasin.
• Another looming federal redistribution in Victoria, whose population boom will again entitle it to an extra seat, has set off a round of turf wars within the ALP, highlighted by a scuffle that broke out at a branch meeting last week. This reportedly followed the arrival of 100 supporters of Labor Right powerbroker Adem Somyurek at a branch meeting held at the Hoppers Crossing home of Jasvinder Sidhu, a Socialist Left preselection aspirant, who was allegedly assaulted after telling the group to leave. Somyurek is said have designs for his faction on the seat of Lalor, held formerly by Julia Gillard and currently by Joanne Ryan, which the party’s once stable factional arrangements reserved for the Left. According to a Labor source quoted in The Age, the Right has secured control of branches in the Calwell electorate and is likely to take the seat when the Left-aligned Maria Vamvakinou retires, while the Left is seeking to gain leverage by putting pressure on Right-aligned Tim Watts in Gellibrand.
Also, the Nine/Fairfax papers are reporting on an Ipsos poll of 1014 respondents concerning climate change, which is apparently part of an annual series conducted by the pollster, with no information provided as to who if anyone might commission it. While the poll records a high pitch of concern about climate change, it does not find this to be at a greater height than last year (somewhat at odds with the recent finding of Ipsos’s Issue Monitor series, which recorded a post-bushfire surge in concern about the environment), and actually records an increase in the number of respondents who had “serious doubts about whether climate change is occurring”: from 19% two years ago to 22% last year to 24% this year.
You have to blame the Australian constitution for allowing those who were found breaching ,example section 44 and not legally to be the sitting member, to contest for the seat in a by-election for the house of reps, straight away.
The law should be set , if you were found not to be legal, should not be allowed to be a candidate for any seat for the house of reps, or be considered for the senate .
For at least 9 years
Rush Limbaugh. Poster boy for big tobacco.
I thought last night and still think that Molan turned up to the Qanda we’re used to, not the one last night that had people who’d lost their homes and were looking for solutions from their elected members. Him asking for fact checking from the climate scientist was just silly and made him look like the numpty old man Liberal MP that characterises the party.
Victoria @ #30 Tuesday, February 4th, 2020 – 7:51 am
I’m waiting for Taylormade to read the story about the $4.3 Billion blowout in the NSW Coalition government’s Metro project, and then try and say with a straight face that Labor’s worse.
TPOF @ #44 Tuesday, February 4th, 2020 – 8:10 am
I agree with those comments. It’s certainly a stellar start for his Q & A career. It was different style to the gotcha style that has been political interviewing for some time on the ABC.
Can we catalogue the Morrison government as now officially ‘embattled’ now?
Morning all. Qanda rightly grilled Molan. He was lying, not a fool. The US defence department has done studies on the risk of climate change and security implications since the 1990s. As defence chief he would have seen them. He knows climate change is real, but lied otherwise. His lies matched the current denialist script, proving he was following orders.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/trump-impeachment-trial-vote-02-03?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
What’s incredibly annoying about this is that you can bet that if Trump were a Democrat and did what he did, he’d have been impeached years ago, and those saying Trump’s actions don’t clear a bar for impeachment would’ve been leading the trial from the front.
They don’t deserve their offices.
Molan, like Morrison, has had an empathy and compassion bypass.
Socrates:
It was obvious he was there to spout some line when Hamish tied him in knots by bringing him back to the question, and had him admitting he doesn’t need evidence.
Speers and MacDonald have both brought a fresh attitude, sorely needed. How long will it last before the government starts to complain? Although the CPG was united in their questioning of Morrison. Good to see.
Alpha Zero @ #52 Tuesday, February 4th, 2020 – 8:13 am
Now the perfect poster boy for an Australian cigarette packet.
Confessions @ #53 Tuesday, February 4th, 2020 – 8:13 am
I think the reality is that the Coalition MPs like Molan know that it is essentially irrelevant to their political fortunes what happens on QandA. Especially so early in the cycle.
They know they have the power to whistle up $100 Million in self-serving ads before the next election, like we found out yesterday, and do deals with grubs like Clive Palmer to inject ~$90 Million into the election and create a Pop Up political party to help get them elected again, not to mention fund a fakebook army of meme generators and bastardise the Grants scheme to sway targeted demographics.
So, he’ll just say, ‘thank you, thank you’ and probably think, thank you for providing grist for the base to chew on.
Molan reminded me of the Japanese soldier who was explaining the order he got to retreat on the Kokoda trail. The problem was that the Japanese had advanced well beyond their capacity to feed themselves. They were starving to death on the Trail.
Given the requirements of honour, Bushido, and readiness to die for the Emperor, there had been no training for orders pertaining to ‘retreat’ or ‘withdraw’.
So, the order came down: ‘Turn around 180 degrees! Advance!’
In the best traditions of head-in-the-sand merchants, Molan is advancing backwards.
Faruqi is rightfully pissed off that the Greens Boy’s Club has cut her chance to nothing by refusing to allow the Greens members to vote on the leadership.
She might give it a go anyway.
She already has ten per cent of the MP vote locked in.
C@t
Vic Labor arent perfect but they have done a really good job in progressing the state over the past five years.
Molan must run the same twisted logic as Morrison. Remember he was a captain’s pick for the Senate.
“This reportedly followed the arrival of 100 supporters of Labor Right powerbroker Adem Somyurek at a branch meeting held at the Hoppers Crossing home of Jasvinder Sidhu, a Socialist Left preselection aspirant, who was allegedly assaulted after telling the group to leave.”
***
Really? I knew the Labor civil war was bad but this is next level. Surely the two factions can have heated political debates without allegedly resorting to physical violence. Kick all 100 out of the party. Labor is better than this, or they should be, and most of them are. Violent right-wingers do not belong anywhere near the Labor party.
“ Quite impressive. Now lets see if Australia opts in or misses out..”
Cud: this! This could be fashioned into a key plank of a winning election platform of Hope and Change that Labor should take forward to the next election.
lizzie @ #61 Tuesday, February 4th, 2020 – 8:21 am
I just hope they push for more Labor MPs to be included. So far, no good. No Labor voices. I’ll wait and see.
Fess
They would have stormed the Whitehouse with pitchforks and forced Obama out.
Lisa Miller was giving Joyce the rounds of the kitchen sink.
Bizarre!
Morrison talking about how ‘God loves us’!
Victoria @ #66 Tuesday, February 4th, 2020 – 8:24 am
I know. I just found it farcical that Taylormade popped up the other day to try and generate opprobrium for Dan Andrews over the ‘blowout’ in the Westgate Tunnel project (I think it was). 😆
Boerwar @ #72 Tuesday, February 4th, 2020 – 8:26 am
They know him.
However, again, Karvelas is the smart one. She listened to Country Hour. So she knows he’ll be back. Whether the CPG abhor him or not.
Oh, FFS – Channel 9 cut to a PM’s presser only for us to hear a Gish Gallop from Scotty from Marketing. However … in promising news the producers soon cut back to the studio for Karl and Blonde Bobblehead5.0 to get stuck into scotty’s performance. Things are looking pretty terminal for this particular marketing campaign I think.
Annabel Crabb
@annabelcrabb
·
2m
Just heard Barnaby Joyce tell
@LisaMillar
that the Nats need to be “seen in their own voice” and “heard in their own colours.” Big-hat-tip to the once-proud Nats tradition of ovation-inducing malapropism.
Well, who needs evidence when you can just make stuff up.
C@t:
While it’s true that Qanda won’t change votes or opinions, if it gets to the point like in 2007 where addressing AGW becomes an important electoral issue, the behaviour of the coalition MPs continue to give the impression that they have no answers and are not to be taken seriously on the matter.
Remember in 2007 it didn’t matter how many rabbits Howard tried to pull out of his hat on AGW, the prevailing view from the electorate is they just didn’t have what it took to get the job done. Hopefully something similar will happen this time around, even more so because of the bushfires and the sheer numbers of people directly affected.
Andrew_Earlwood @ #76 Tuesday, February 4th, 2020 – 8:29 am
But, like the Energiser Bunny, Scotty from Marketing will just keep on going every day, employing every trick in the book, from now until the election in 2022.
And the networks will have to give him at least a passing nod because he is the PM. 😐
Vic:
Joni Ernst is already talking about impeaching Biden, and the Democratic nomination hasn’t even been decided!
‘fess,
And I hope so too. However, facebook and other brazen abuses of power, with money, weren’t as ubiquitous as they are now, so I’m unsure if Labor can break through the Wall of Sound sensory overload approach that Conservative parties have adopted as their successful political formula.
Greensborough Growler @ #77 Tuesday, February 4th, 2020 – 8:30 am
Sir Joh would have been proud of those. I’m just concerned that criticism of Barnaby is just water off a duck’s oily.
Boerwar @ #73 Tuesday, February 4th, 2020 – 8:27 am
By burning down millions of hectares of our country and killing billions of our native animals!?!
Barney @7.44,
“It seems Molan’s belief in science doesn’t go far beyond ballistic trajectories.”
Do you mean his temper or artillery?
C@t
Qanda did more damage to the government by having Molan there than if a Labor person had attacked them. Clevah!
C@t:
All the more important for AGW to be framed as the economic threat that it is.
Boerwar
As I don’t know Canberra at all, I was unaware of the area of wildlife habitat that might be burnt. Although your comments are obviously depressing, I appreciate the view you are providing.
lizzie @ #86 Tuesday, February 4th, 2020 – 8:39 am
I’m just worried that the blissfully ignorant that support the Coalition Crazies wing that Molan is a part of, will just see it as ‘anti Coalition bias’ and ‘showing no respect for the Senator’, thus reinforcing their prejudices? Then hop into QandA on 2GB and Sky.
@Boerwar – gotta ask – what is “the rounds of the kitchen sink”?
Bellwether @ #82 Tuesday, February 4th, 2020 – 8:35 am
Rural Australia is just swimming in drought.
Never before have I witnessed a greater idiot with a greater sense of self-importance than Barnaby Joyce.
Federal pollies have gathered in Canberra from all over Australia. Will it make them more aware of the fires? Dammit, their capital is burning.
On ABC RN Breakfast Fran Kelly interviewed Errol O’Dwyer whose son Andrew died alongside Geoff Keaton when the fire truck they were travelling in was hit by a burning tree and rolled in December.
He blames no one for his son’s death, is sick of the blame game and defends Morrison.
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/relatives-of-fallen-firefighters-gather-in-canberra/11926844
T
The whole biffo…
You must not forget that the LNP version of Bushido involves throwing others, usually Labor or some public servant, on the sword before finally, after a protracted amount of time, realising that there’s a corner behind them with no exit in sight falling upon the nerf sword.
Boerwar @ #95 Tuesday, February 4th, 2020 – 8:45 am
B – Ta.
A visual of a small swarm of ADF uniforms feeding koala joeys in the Adelaide hills.
What a fucking huge waste of taxpayer monies!
Pegasus
A father’s way of rationalising his son’s death, I suppose. He has to take comfort wherever he can find it.