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.
CC
I have been clear and precise about the need for multiparty governance and more representative democracy. This is what motivates me to be a member of a viable third party.
That is all.
I have no desire to painfully and laboriously tap out several very lengthy posts and the responses that would be subsequently required and demanded of me.
‘You have to love someone who comes out with an anecdote about a single comment made by a single Greens supporter fifteen years ago.’
Oh, thanks, peg.
That’s sweet.
I think that Morrison, Frydenberg and the rest of the gang are terrified to make any major decisions affecting Australia and its people because they know they are basically incompetent and fear the backlash if they get it wrong.
All they are capable of is bluff and bluster, plus using their PR “skills” to attack the Opposition, unions and anyone else they don’t like.
Meanwhile they are facing a climate change revolt from the realists within their own ranks and Barnaby “Gimme what I want or I’ll wreck da joint” Joyce. It must be giving Morrison nightmares and deservedly so.
bakunin @ #2424 Saturday, February 8th, 2020 – 4:07 pm
Bitch. Bitch. Bitch. Couldn’t think of a more original slur than ‘lurch to the Right’? As zoomster pointed out, there is nothing ‘lurch to the Right’ about Labor’s recent policies. With the examples she gave and Labor’s Redistributive policies from the last election. Or don’t The Greens believe in their old mantras about redistributing wealth from the wealthy to the poor anymore since you all took up residence in the Inner City and Sea and Tree Change enclaves?
Bellwethers
How about we do a Portugal and decriminalise them ? Last I heard they have not been over run by an army of drug addled zombies due to such a reform .
zoomster @ #2449 Saturday, February 8th, 2020 – 4:55 pm
Pegasus, who mines the archives every day for derogatory bumpf to sully the reputation of Labor. Every. Single. Day!?!
Too funny.
C@t
I’m sure the guys and gals of the NSW Labor RW would thoroughly agree with you, heck they probably think they are still way too lefty. Whatever it takes.
poroti @ #2454 Saturday, February 8th, 2020 – 5:06 pm
poroti,
Way to prove you are a mile wide and an inch deep.
Bellwether @ 4.06pm,
Thank you. 🙂
Pegasus
So.. you can’t state what it is that you want Labor to do differently. Fair enough.
The thing I hate about this entire pointless bitch fest is that no one is prepared to debate actual, concrete policy detail.
Cat
“since you all took up residence in the Inner City and Sea and Tree Change enclaves?”
“All?” This might come as a shock, given your unmoveable stereotypical beliefs, I live in neither of these much-maligned areas.
Hands up all PBers who do! I hazard a guess individuals from all political allegiances reside there. How shocking.
Morrison and Frydenberg were at pains to promote the Government as calm under pressure and not to panic at the mere whiff of an economic recession or ‘global headwinds’. Not like that hysterical Labor party spending like drunken sailors during the GFC. It was the sole basis for Morrison’s holiday to Hawaii and holding him back from returning quick smart once the people started agitating.
Cud Chewer @ #2461 Saturday, February 8th, 2020 – 5:09 pm
But this is Labor’s new strategy, remember?
No policies = small target = guaranteed election win!
Cud Chewer @ #2461 Saturday, February 8th, 2020 – 5:09 pm
How about this?
I’m preparing, based upon my own long-held pov, to put up a policy suggestion to our upcoming FEC Policy Forum, to change Labor policy to approve, if necessary and if Wind and Solar with Big Battery back-up, and Pumped Hydro, are inadequate to meet Energy demand, that we support Small Scale Zero Emissions Thorium-powered Nuclear Reactors.
Discuss. 🙂
And in other news…
MIT has come up with a very interesting solution for solid metal lithium anodes (for batteries). Things are really happening in the world of battery research..
https://newatlas.com/materials/mits-solid-state-battery-breakthrough/
C@tmomma
NSW state Labor was (still?) a fetid swamp allowed to turn septic under effing Bob Carr. Obeid may be the name continually used but there was greyhound bus full of the bent bastards. Have they all departed ? Is it all sparkling clean now ? NSW Labor worked long and hard for their ‘reputation’ it is going to take a long time to redeem themselves. Especially the bloody RW pricks.
P1
‘But this is Labor’s new strategy, remember?
No policies = small target = guaranteed election win!’
No, it isn’t. And you’ve had it explained to you multiple times, so you’re either being willfully stupid or just stupid.
Either way, a bit pointless trying to explain to you what a policy review is.
Someone just asked me what my view of life is and it took all of thirty seconds to answer:
From an episode of the Tom Baker Doctor Who years (Destiny of the Daleks), “The living are just the dead on holidays.”
This seems tragic.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EQO4eVHUwAArV4D?format=jpg&name=900×900#image/png
Thanks for the suggestion, Peg.
I was thinking of suggesting to you that the recycled anti-Labor posts from prior years could enliven one of the older threads?
CC
Out in the real world, face to face, I do.
PB is essentially regarded by the entrenched Laborites as a ‘safe place’ where they can bitch and moan together about why those “stupid, ignorant and low-information voters” can’t see the light about how magnificent Labor is, and how it is ‘the one and only true answer’ to the meaning of life.
There is never any real and sincere attempt to analyse non-Labor policies by the entrenched Laborites. It has been forever thus. It will not change C’est la politics.
Anyway, am going to enjoy free music in the park.
C@tmomma
Ah thorium reactors, just around the corner since forever 😆 Although it would be could if such a ‘flying car’ came about as we are the world’s ‘800lb gorilla’ of thorium reserves. Of course being Australia we will probably have sold/sell it all to be mined by foreign owned companies to profit of our resources.
As if in a dream – the solution to political wrangling, world peace and that!
Boldly announced just now on local TV –
Must Watch TV – tomorrow night.
The world shattering – magnificence without parallel – scientific glory – fusion power perhaps – time travel – event . What could it be I ask myself ❓
Wait for it now – quiet in the rear ranks –
Why it’s “Married At First Sight”.
I think I may be about to get religion. 🙏
Lizzie, I have never heard of Mr Puig before – despite the SmearStralian outing him as ‘an ALP operative’ this morning, who was charged with possession of child pornography.
Apparently he had been an assistant secretary in the Vic Branch some years ago – enough for Murdoch goons to plaster his name and the allegations in their national shitsheet.
I see they have taken down the online article since his suicide.
poroti @ #2467 Saturday, February 8th, 2020 – 5:22 pm
Says dude from the other side of the country. 😆
You may not have heard about it over there in Perth but The Lavarch Report is the blueprint for change that has been 100% adopted by Jodi McKay, NSW State Opposition Leader and Anthony Albanese, FPLP Leader.
Please excuse me if the change isn’t as quick as YOU may like, we are working through all its recommendations, but change is happening, to the extent that, one day, pipsqueaks like you won’t be able to bring up the name of Eddie Obeid et al again without having to eat your words.
C@tmomma @ #2465 Saturday, February 8th, 2020 – 5:14 pm
Hmmm. You might want to look up the current state of thorium reactor development before you propose that idea to a bunch of people who probably know a little bit about what they’re talking about.
sprocket
Yes, it seemed deliberate Labor smearing which is why I posted the solicitor’s explanation (didn’t quite copy fully), as it was referenced on PB earlier.
At the risk of interrupting the exciting ALP/Green slugfest with irrelevant non-polity detail, there’s something quite interesting emerging from nCoV virology & epidemiology.
The sequencing of clinical strains from the Wuhan early epicentre suggests that nCoV is a bat coronavirus with a specific mutation of S1, one of the two genes that make up the spike protein that sticks out of the CoV to allow it to bind to a target cell in the airway. This mutation is very like that of SARS CoV and allows binding to angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) 2 receptors in the lower airway of humans, though with less fidelity than SARS CoV. It is quite likely that this is the mechanism by which nCoV both started spreading from the intermediate mammalian host (not the bats, which were apparently not available in Wuhan wet market in the Nov-Dec period when this mutation looks to have occurred), to become both pathogenic (disease-causing) and transmissible from human to human early – before the onset of clinical illness. nCoV is likely to have emerged in Wuhan in November 2019, be much more infectious (R0 > 2.6) and have a higher epidemic potential than SARS, MERS or any of the pandemic influenza strains – and may start to select for strains with tighter binding to ACE2 receptors, with greater shedding potential and little hope of direct containment, as occurred with SARS or MERS. This is a new threat that may not be contained in China.
poroti,
Did you read Katie Allen’s opinion piece from the Dawn Patrol this morning? If not, I recommend that you do. Yes, I know she is the Liberal Member for Higgins, but she is also a Professor of Science and Paediatrics (or so the article stated).
She referenced the Chief Scientist and Tepco, who are replacing the Fukushime Reactors with new Small Scale Reactors using Thorium. So I guess the future is now.
The updated SmearStralian article can be read here https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/child-sex-charges-for-alp-lobbyist-andres-puig/news-story/0ea91b5b18be12c32978ec4bc88085ad
They haven’t bothered to update the smear URL, nor admitted that their harrasment of the man probably contributed to the tragedy. They say: “ Mr Puig failed to respond to telephone and text requests from The Weekend Australian on Friday to detail the nature of the police charges”
And his ALP affiliations?
“Mr Puig built his reputation as a political machine man in the 1990s and 2000s. He is well connected within the union movement and rose to ALP assistant state secretary in the early 2000s.”
If nothing else, the Trump presidency has made for some interesting book releases. Eric Swalwell, sitting Democrat has one coming out soon.
GG:
Are you not familiar with “churning”, a repetitive process traditionally essential to butter production!
C@tmomma @ #2465 Saturday, February 8th, 2020 – 2:14 pm
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power;
Possible benefits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power#Possible_benefits
Possible disadvantages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power#Possible_disadvantages
It’d probably be far cheaper to make renewables more efficient, not to mention quicker. Building one or more of these is probably a decade or two away from fruition, by which time renewables may have achieved the level of necessary reliability.
Plus, whereas Australia is the world’s biggest repository of Thorium, we don’t have the R&D capability to take it further. So, like every other technology, we’ll be the world’s quarry and sell other countries the minerals, and then they’ll sell it back to us as finished product at a huge markup.
sprocket:
Never heard of him and can’t access the article. What state/territory is he in?
sprocket_,
The Australian have moved on from scraping the bottom of the barrel to get at the ALP, to scraping the bottom of the sewer from the early 2000s.
Dearest rhwombat,
In your expert opinion, do you think that a trip to Thailand should be planned for September this year? Wrt nCoV19
Danama P.,
One of the largest deposits of Thorium, so I understand, is just down the road from me in suburban Kincumber!
However, I intentionally made the caveat that IF we look like running out of energy from Renewable sources with battery back-up, then we should consider other Zero Emissions technologies.
zoomster @ #2468 Saturday, February 8th, 2020 – 5:23 pm
You should take this up with the various Labor partisans here who have said much the same thing here over the past few weeks, or perhaps with Paul Harcher, who said much the same thing just yesterday.
Pegasus:
You are 100% correct.
The key topic in “how to lose elections” 101 is “confuse voters”. That’s why it’s a very bad idea in political terms to adopt “same-same” as part of an electoral strategy, unless the intention to to turn people off voting entirely (which is of course the strategy of the Traitors’ Party in the United States).
lizzie @ #2948 Saturday, February 8th, 2020 – 5:08 pm
Kerryn Phelps is a politician and never was a valued member of the medical profession.
Fess
Mr Puig was from Victoria – an ‘influential ALP lobbyist’ – according to the Smear.
In other news, the beatings will continue until morale improves!
rhwombat
I rather thought you might say that!!
C@tmomma @ #2480 Saturday, February 8th, 2020 – 5:40 pm
She apparently knows as much about thorium reactors as you do.
Rhwombat, I had some involvement with Health policy in the RGR years, and was warned several times about ‘doctor politics’ – was never really sure what it meant 🙂
C@tmomma @ #2977 Saturday, February 8th, 2020 – 5:46 pm
Dunno. Could be OK, but I don’t think we will know that far ahead for months.
Thanks, rhw. So, to the best of your knowledge, have there been any cases of nCoV19 in Thailand yet?
Andrew Gillum was on Real Time today where he continued to make similar points about voter disenfranchisement and suppression.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/think-iowa-was-a-mess-black-voters-deal-with-similar-chaos-all-the-time/2020/02/05/fa6f51f2-4890-11ea-9164-d3154ad8a5cd_story.html
https://twitter.com/i/status/1226015352296886272