As you can see in the post below this one, the Courier-Mail yesterday had a YouGov Galaxy state poll for Queensland that found both major parties stranded in the mid-thirties on the primary vote. State results from this series are usually followed a day or two later by federal ones, but no sign of that to this point. If it’s Queensland state politics reading you’re after, I can offer my guide to the Currumbin by-election, to be held on March 29. Other than that, there’s the following news on how various parliamentary vacancies around the place will be or might be filled:
• Noel Towell of The Age reports two former state MPs who fell victim to the Greens’ weak showing at the November 2018 state election are “potentially strong contenders” to take Richard Di Natale’s Senate seat when he leaves parliament, which will be determined by a vote of party members. These are Lidia Thorpe, who won the Northcote by-election from Labor in June 2018, and Huong Truong, who filled Colleen Hartland’s vacancy in the Western Metropolitan upper house seat in February 2018. The party’s four current state MPs have all ruled themselves out. Others said to be potential starters include Brian Walters, a barrister and former Liberty Victoria president, and Dinesh Mathew, a television actor who ran in the state seat of Caulfield in 2018.
• Former Tasmanian Premier Will Hodgman’s seat in parliament will be filled by Nic Street, following a preference countback of the votes Hodgman received in the seat of Franklin at the March 2018 election. This essentially amounted to a race between Street and the other Liberal who nominated for the recount, Simon Duffy. Given Street was only very narrowly unsuccessful when he ran as an incumbent at the election, being squeezed out for the last of the five seats by the Greens, it was little surprise that he easily won the countback with 8219 out of 11,863 (70.5%). This is the second time Street has made it to parliament on a countback, the first being in February 2016 on the retirement of Paul Harriss.
• The Age reports Mary Wooldridge’s vacancy in the Victorian Legislative Council is likely to be filled either by Emanuele Cicchiello, former Knox mayor and deputy principal at Lighthouse Christian College, or Asher Judah, who ran unsuccessfully in Bentleigh in 2018. Party sources are quoted expressing surprise that only four people have nominated, with the only woman being Maroondah councillor Nora Lamont, reportedly a long shot. Also in the field is Maxwell Gratton, chief executive of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/feb/11/canavan-delayed-releasing-documents-about-coal-lobby-interactions-before-resigning
New thread.
Who grouped me in with the Greens ??
Intriguing
Just think what will happen if Emperor Donald the First gets in for another four years, or possibly forever.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/02/09/trump-budget-plan-would-fail-eliminate-deficit-over-10-years-briefing-document-shows/
The US becomes a banana republic and tears itself apart?
I daresay that the catastrophic economic impact on Tourism of the Bushfires and the Carona Virus will linger for some time. The political impact may be a slow burn for awhile. But, history shows that a regimes power slides in the wake of Natural Disasters. So the LNP may be in trouble over coming months.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-11/twin-disasters-coronavirus-bushfires-hit-tourism-sector/11949922
Greensborough Growler @ #1200 Tuesday, February 11th, 2020 – 6:33 am
And that’s a good thing. I’d be disappointed to see the memory of Morrison’s woeful behaviour being washed away with the rain. The storms which, themselves, are another salient reminder of Climate Change and its effects on our weather.
Greensborough Growler @ #1205 Tuesday, February 11th, 2020 – 7:40 am
And you watch Morrison and Frydenburg try and craft a Leave Pass on the Surplus for themselves as a result. While, as we know, if it were Labor in the same position they would call those things, ‘excuses’.
mexican
‘The network was built with an eye to the future of where they thought Melbourne would grow.’
No, it was built to suit the interests of MPs, who at the time weren’t paid. This meant Parliament was filled with men with agendas, so the rail line went where it benefited them.
Read “The Land Boomers” – and all of a sudden, some of the perennial problems of Melbourne’s transport system makes sense!
zoomster says:
Tuesday, February 11, 2020 at 7:51 am
mexican
‘The network was built with an eye to the future of where they thought Melbourne would grow.’
No, it was built to suit the interests of MPs, who at the time weren’t paid. This meant Parliament was filled with men with agendas, so the rail line went where it benefited them.
Read “The Land Boomers” – and all of a sudden, some of the perennial problems of Melbourne’s transport system makes sense!
———————————————–
The history shows the motive of those politicians and land speculators was looking to future profit from future growth. In a round about way they got it right with some glaring omissions.