Return of the frack

A contentious preference recommendation by the Greens brings a Northern Territory by-election to life, while the closure of nominations yields only a small field of candidates for the Queensland seat of Currumbin.

No Newspoll this week, owing to The Australian’s enthusiasm for unleashing them at the start of parliamentary sitting weeks, requiring a three week break rather than the usual two. However, we do have a extensive new poll on the bushfire crisis from the Australian National University’s Centre for Social Research and Methods and the Social Research Centre. It finds that fully 78.6% of the population reports being affected by the fires in one way or another, 14.4% severely or directly. Half the sample of 3000 respondents was asked how Scott Morrison had handled the bushfires, of whom 64.5% disapproved; for the other half the question was framed in terms of the government, with 59.4% disapproving.

Beyond that, there’s the two state/territory by-election campaigns currently in progress:

• I have posted a guide to next Saturday’s by-election in the Northern Territory seat of Johnston, which has suddenly became of more than marginal interest owing to the Greens decision to put Labor last on their how-to-vote cards (albeit that local electoral laws prevent these being distributed within close proximity of polling booths). This has been done to protest the decision by Michael Gunner’s Labor government to lift a moratorium on gas fracking exploration. The party has not taken such a step in any jurisdiction since the Queensland state election of July 1995, when it sought to punish Wayne Goss’s government in the seat of Springwood over a planned motorway through a koala habitat. This made a minor contribution to its loss of the seat, and hence to its eventual removal from office after a by-election defeat the following February. There’s acres of useful information on all this on Antony Green’s new blog, which he is publishing independently due to the ABC’s cavalier treatment of the invaluable blog he had there in happier times. There will also be a piece by me on the Greens’ decision in Crikey today, God willing.

• The other by-election in progress at the moment is for the Queensland seat of Currumbin on March 28, for which my guide can be found guide can be found here. With the closure of nominations last week, only two candidates emerged additional to Laura Gerber of the Liberal National Party and Kaylee Campradt of Labor: Sally Spain of the Greens, a perennial candidate for the party in federal and state Gold Coast seats; and Nicholas Bettany of One Nation, about whom the only thing I can tell you is that he recently deleted his Twitter account (what’s preserved of it on the Google cache reveals nothing particularly outrageous).

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.

1,591 comments on “Return of the frack”

Comments Page 17 of 32
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  1. Firefox
    ” The Greens’ policies on asylum seekers were never implemented.”

    Nothing new here. No Greens policies are ever implemented. That’s what makes the Greens the Greens: a protest party that never actually achieves anything. If the Greens did actually achieve anything, they’d have nothing to protest about.

  4. JM

    I’m asking you if Labor are planning to betray their core principles to help Liberals even if it means their own destruction. You seem to think it’s something the Greens should have done to help Labor.

  5. Firefox, Lizzie and others

    “ Support for a carbon tax:

    Buttigieg – Yes.
    Sanders – No, not anymore.”

    Sanders supports the Green New Deal, just as the Aus Greens do too.”

    Nothing against the Greens CC policy but the economics has reached the point where you no longer need a carbon price to resolve climate change. You need to remove impediments to reform like some AEMO rules and gaps in our grid. Wind power plus storage and rooftop solar is so much cheaper than coal that it will then rapidly be displaced.

    Likewise with transport – stop subsidising uneconomic freeway and airport projects and the alternatives become obvious. And agriculture – enforce existing tree clearing, vegetation and water allocation laws and half the problem is solved.

    At this point the damage from climate change is so clear, and the solutions so much cheaper, that it is only vested interests and corruption that stop it being fixed. Sadly though, Australian Federal politics has grown fairly corrupt, so it remains hard to get traction.

  6. “Nothing new here. No Greens policies are ever implemented.”

    ***

    This comment betrays a complete lack of knowledge of Australian politics, both past and present.

  7. Bernie will be torn to shreds by Trump and his goons with his past. There is nothing surer.

    He keeps on going on about the establishment but Bernie has been part of it since 1991. He can’t claim the higher ground there.

    Plus he will be 79 by the time of inauguration and has had a heart attack in the last 6 months.

    If the nomination is close, the super delegates won’t select Sanders.

  8. I’ve been distracted by finding food that required immediate cooking because of use-by date, but this caught my eye.

    Dr Stuart Edser @StuartEdser
    ·
    7m
    Fallen trees and power outages after Sydney battered by storm and devoured by giant pacman.

  9. Via Pegasus,

    Laus Neumann – Anatomy of a broken taboo

    An election in a tiny East German state has reverberated all the way to the top of the country’s politics

    https://insidestory.org.au/anatomy-of-a-broken-taboo/

    “That too says something about Germany in 2020. While the rise of the AfD has made life difficult for Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, it has strengthened the Greens. It has provided motivation and oxygen to groups outside parliament that not only oppose the far right, but also fight for measures to combat climate change and for a generous asylum and refugee policy. In other words, Germany might have experienced a resurgence of the far right since 2013, but it has also seen a civil society–led backlash against the extreme right and in favour of an alternative vision of society that may otherwise have been utterly unrealistic. Watch this space.”

    I really cannot agree with Laus here. If more people are caring about the climate and humane refugee policy, that is a good thing. However, the event that led to it, AfD doing well in an election is a very bad sign for European social democracy.

    I keep saying that we are trying to live the 1930s again and hoping for a different result. The result will be the same as before. The political centre will disappear, and the right will have almost untrammelled access to the levers of power. That is because you can motivate many more people by racism, bigotry and greed than you ever can by positive change, as John W Howard showed us so successfully. Australia is not the same country it was before Howard was elected.

    We are also looking at illiberal democracies spring up in Central Europe, and I think Brexit was mostly motivated by the convictions of the working class that migrants were taking their jobs and living on their taxes.

  12. kirky @ #807 Wednesday, February 19th, 2020 – 4:01 pm

    Bernie will be torn to shreds by Trump and his goons with his past. There is nothing surer.

    He keeps on going on about the establishment but Bernie has been part of it since 1991. He can’t claim the higher ground there.

    Plus he will be 79 by the time of inauguration and has had a heart attack in the last 6 months.

    If the nomination is close, the super delegates won’t select Sanders.

    Wow, you really know your shit Professor!

  13. bakunin @ #804 Wednesday, February 19th, 2020 – 2:28 pm

    JM

    I’m asking you if Labor are planning to betray their core principles to help Liberals even if it means their own destruction. You seem to think it’s something the Greens should have done to help Labor.

    No, I am pointing out the hypocrisy of Greens’ tired old Lib-Lab same-same line.

    If Greens voted against the Malaysian option because it would hurt them at the polls if they didn’t, that is okay.

    But they can’t then claim to be morally superior to other political parties, for doing exactly what other parties do, go where the votes are.

    (If Labor support the anti-union bill in any form, then I will be very pissed off, and they will deserve all the electoral blow back they get for it. Including losing votes to the Greens.)

  14. Kirky, that’s just the same old establishment talking points.

    Bloomberg is just 5 months younger than Sanders! They’re both 78!

    Sanders has released medical advice stating he’s in good health and ready to take on the job of president.

    Bernie will expose Trump for the con artist and the liar he is.

  15. Speaking of the UK tories, the Guardian newsletter has just come in with this:

    No 10 under pressure to say whether it vetted ‘racist’ Andrew Sabisky

    Downing Street has come under intense pressure to say whether it vetted a No 10 adviser who argued that intelligence is linked to race, amid fresh questions about chief aide Dominic Cummings’ drive to employ “misfits and weirdos” to work under him.

    A day after Andrew Sabisky said he would step down as a “contractor” to Downing Street because of the furore about his posts online, Labour wrote to Boris Johnson asking him to explain how the appointment was made, and whether the prime minister agreed with Sabisky’s views.
    …….

    However, No 10 refused to respond to separate questions from the Guardian about Sabisky’s employment, whether he was vetted or had a security pass.

    Downing Street has so far declined to give even basic details of Sabisky’s work, or how he was recruited. Officials also refused to comment on the status of two other so-called “super-forecasters” pictured with him outside No 10 in January.

    The photo was tweeted by Michael Story, co-founder of a forecasting startup called Maby, who has now made his Twitter account private. It showed Story and Sabisky with the other founder of Maby, Thomas Liptay.

    Sabisky stepped down following increasing criticism from Conservatives and opposition politicians after details emerged of his views on subjects ranging from black people’s IQs to using brain-enhancing drugs on children, and whether benefits claimants should be encouraged to have fewer children.

  16. @ricklevy67
    ·
    25m
    The @LiberalAus Coalition Is To Blame For The Plague Of Underpayment Cases. Before The Coalition Changed Industrial Relations Laws Unions Would Regularly Check Pay Rolls For Discrepancies , Now They Are Longer Able To Do So
    @cporterwa

  17. C@tmomma,

    Your post election comment that “Labor needs to adopt Liberal Policy and recruit Liberals to run as Labor candidates” was unforgettable — no need to trawl back through the archives for that.

    It does seem rather prescient…

  19. @Kirky re super deligates

    You may be right, and this would ensure four more years for Trump as large amounts of Sanders supporters would simply find something else to do on election day. It was one thing getting them out in 2016 in spite of the fact many felt let down by the process; as I’ve noted many times Sanders supporters came out in bigger numbers in 2016 for Clinton than Clinton supporters came out for Obama in 2008. Good luck getting them out if he loses due to super deligates!

  21. Firefox
    “Sanders has released medical advice stating he’s in good health and ready to take on the job of president.”

    Sanders is a socialist, so I’m skeptical of both these claims.

  23. bakunin @ #817 Wednesday, February 19th, 2020 – 4:14 pm

    C@tmomma,

    Your post election comment that “Labor needs to adopt Liberal Policy and recruit Liberals to run as Labor candidates” was unforgettable — no need to trawl back through the archives for that.

    It does seem rather prescient…

    They already have Liberals pretending to be Labor…

    The dolt Bowen and his austerity attitude to Newstart

    The turnip Marles and his celebration of coal

    The Matron Plibersek and herpledge of allegiance

    The sock puppet Fitzgibbon and his lobbying for fossil fuel environment terrorists.

  25. The Green’s onslaught today on PB reminds me of the HeeBeeJeeBees’ and their performance of Meaningless Songs. The lyrics are a pretty apt and their thrust is being followed to a tee.

    “Meaningless songs in very high voices” to “The world is very very large, And butter is better than marge” resonate throughout.

    Ominously, the last verse also rings true.
    “……..in very high voices
    Until the record ends
    And when it does we’ll simply start again
    Yelling
    Meaningless words, meaningless words
    Ah ah ah ah ah-ah-ah
    Meaningless words, meaningless words
    Ah ah ah ah ah-ah-ah”

  26. Here is something else for the Bush Bandit to take to farmers:

    ‘To develop and implement an effective framework — including financial incentives, pricing mechanisms, extension services and regulation — to ensure that farmers and land managers are rewarded for the repair and maintenance of ecosystem services.’

    https://greens.org.au/policies/agriculture

    To parse this you need to have an idea of ‘ecosystem services’. Here is a basic, high level set.

    Here is a basic set of ecoystem services that will regulated on farms by a mixture of rewards and punishments:

    regulating services – climate regulation, waste treatment, disease regulation
    provisioning services – terrestrial products, fresh water, raw materials, biochemical and genetic resources, fresh air
    cultural services – inspirational, recreation, tourism
    Supporting services – nutrient cycling, biologically mediated habitats, primary production.

    This, like all Greens policies needs a bit of parsing for those on whom it is going to impact. The first thing to note is that this policy will impact on farmers and will benefit Inner Urbs Greens. This is no surprise because that is bog standard for all Greens policies.

    But the $64 question is how the Bush Bandit will frame this in a simple and direct way for the farmers with whom he is about to ‘connect’. Here it is:

    We are going to establish a comprehensive set of regulations covering every single last aspect of your farming operation. If you don’t comply, we will punish you.

    To sum up the first three communications by Bandt when connecting with farmers:

    We are going to take away your GMO Cotton, we are going to take away 605 Gigs of your irrigation water and we are going to regulate absolutely everything on your farm and punish you if you disobey the regulations.

  27. JM,

    This is the Greens Refugee policy in the lead up to the 2007 election.
    Point 1.8 was specially opposed to programs like Malaysian Solution.

    There is no way The Greens MP’s could have supported MS without betraying Greens principles, policy, members and voters, and themselves.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20060819091236/http://greens.org.au/policies/society/immigrationandrefugees

    Refugees

    Australia has committed itself to international treaties and conventions concerning refugees and human rights and it must honour these obligations. The current system of mandatory detention places us in breach of international obligations and violates the fundamental human rights of asylum seekers. The Australian Greens will work to have such detention abolished.

    1.4 The Australian Greens recognise the inadequacies of the narrow Refugee Convention definition. The Australian Greens support the expansion of Australia’s foreign aid program and humanitarian visa classes to assist individuals, families and communities across the world who are displaced for reasons of famine, poverty, environmental degradation, war, political oppression or any form of direct or indirect denial of their fundamental human rights.

    The Australian Greens:

    1.5 call for asylum seekers who arrive without a valid visa to be housed in open reception centres until health and security checks are completed or 14 days has passed, whichever occurs first, and then assisted without delay to move into the community with appropriate support

    1.6 reject the labelling of asylum seekers as ‘illegal immigrants’, ‘queue jumpers’ and ‘unauthorised arrivals’ and affirm the right guaranteed under the Refugee Convention for any person seeking asylum to enter a country without authorisation

    1.7 reject the indefinite imprisonment of such asylum seekers

    1.8 reject the forced transfer of asylum seekers to Pacific nations (the so-called Pacific Solution) or other offshore or remote locations as an offensive affront to human rights and the Refugee Convention

    1.9 reject the repatriation of people who arrive without a valid visa whose deportation is due solely to their ignorance of the precise words and procedures required to assert their rights

    1.10 reject the privatisation of immigration detention centres

    1.11 reject, in accordance with the Refugee Convention, discriminatory separation of refugees into permanent and temporary visa categories based on whether or not they arrived with a valid visa

    1.12 reject the ‘seven day rule’ legislation whereby asylum seekers cannot gain a permanent protection visa if they have spent seven days in a third country

    1.13 reject the excision of any part of Australia from the ‘Australian migration zone’

    1.14 reject the restriction of asylum seekers’ legal right to challenge decisions that affect them in the courts

    1.15 call for child refugees and asylum seekers to be given the same rights as adult refugees and asylum seekers

    1.16 call for child refugees and asylum seekers to be afforded access to all forms of public education, without charge of fees.

  29. The highly-rated Emerson Poll has Sanders as the only candidate in positive territory vs Trump and +7 in 2020 Democratic Presidential Nomination. Watch as optimism empowers his large support base of regular people and panic begins to grip the Democratic establishment and the MSM.

  30. Mick Minion @mick_minion
    1m

    ☠️The forged document was sent by Angus Taylor.

    ☠️The forged document was a crime

    ☠️Angus Taylor committed the crime unless he proves otherwise.

    ☠️Neither the @nswpolice or @AusFedPolice interviewed Angus Taylor.

    ☠️Both forces are hopelessly compromised.

  31. lizzie @ #824 Wednesday, February 19th, 2020 – 1:27 pm

    Dr Stuart Edser ️‍
    @StuartEdser
    ·
    3m
    The Religious Discrimination bill was meant to give conservative Christians the right to be nasty to gays. But Morrison & Porter have stuffed up big time. The RD bill backfires, giving everyone else a right to be nasty to Christians. #auspol

    https://www.smh.com.au/national/religious-discrimination-bill-backfires-on-christians-20200218-p541vz.html

    😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆

  33. “You seem to think it’s something the Greens should have done to help Labor.”
    Yes!, changed their vote to the ALP.
    Instead of wandering in the wilderness with no hope of achieving anything.

  37. 1934pc
    “Instead of wandering in the wilderness with no hope of achieving anything.”

    Yeah, but “principles”… or something.

    I know the Greens never get anything done. But those “principles” give them a warm and fuzzy feeling inside.

  38. Bellwether
    “Watch as optimism empowers his large support base of regular people ”

    Sanders’ support base may be many things, but it is not “large”. It may look “large” at rallies… but then again, so did Corbyn’s support base.

  39. hahaaaa!

    Its difficult to imagine how the incompetent dunce ward of the LNP could’ve rooted up this Religious Discrimination Bill more than they have. What a clusterf*ck!

    Check this out. Im laughing my head off about it.

    ‘Employers will be able to ridicule Christians in the workplace. For example, an atheist boss could put a poster above a Christian worker’s desk saying “Christianity is superstitious nonsense”. The boss could also say things like “Christianity is like a mental disorder” to a Christian during a job interview.’

    https://www.theage.com.au/national/religious-discrimination-bill-backfires-on-christians-20200218-p541vz.html

  40. USA Election

    Poll of 11 battleground states: AZ, CO, FL, ME, MI, MN, NV, NH, NC, PA, & WI

    Biden 52% – Trump 44% (+8)
    Bloomberg 48 – Trump 46 (+2)
    Sanders 49 – Trump 48 (+1)
    Klobuchar 48 – Trump 47 (+1)
    Buttigieg 47 – Trump 47 (-)

    2016 result : Trump 47.7, Clinton 47.1, Other 5.2: Trump +0.6

    2016 if you discount ‘Others’ for the horse-race figure : Trump 50.3, Clinton 49.7; Trump +0.6

    https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris

  41. The posts here at PB supporting Sanders should be collated and published as one of the finest collections of suicide notes ever put together in the one place at the one time.

  42. BB
    You’re not wrong.
    If/when Sanders does get the nomination, and if/when Sanders loses bigly against Trump, these Bernie-or-Bust testimonials will be delightful reading

  43. Every child’s future under threat from climate change and poor health, major report warns

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2020-02-19/lancet-commission-child-health-climate-change/11978048

    Climate change and harmful marketing are jeopardising the future of every child around the world — and Australia is failing to create an environment fit for future generations.

    That’s according to a major international report released today by the World Health Organisation (WHO), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and leading medical journal, The Lancet.

    The report, titled A Future for the World’s Children?, warns climate change, conflict and harmful marketing practices that drive obesity threaten the health and future of children worldwide.
    :::
    The report found that no country is adequately protecting children’s health, their environment and their future in the face of “environmental and existential threats”.
    :::
    Every child worldwide now faces existential threats from climate change and commercial pressures,” Ms Clark said.
    :::
    “Decades of wilful neglect of the environment and the erosion of compassion have transformed the lucky country to an international laggard that is failing its children,” said Dr Hanna.
    :::
    “Otherwise what we’re basically doing is leaving young people with ill health and a climate mess to clean up long after we’re gone. And that’s unconscionable.”
    :::
    “The climate emergency is rapidly undermining the future survival of all species, and the likelihood of a world in which all children enjoy their right to health appears increasingly out of reach,” the authors wrote.

    “The task at hand is urgent and immense … There can be no excuses, and no time to lose.”

  44. bakunin

    There is no way The Greens MP’s could have supported MS without betraying Greens principles, policy, members and voters, and themselves.

    In which case Greens MPs, members and voters need to take a long hard look at themselves, because that principled choice worked out so well for the refugees, didn’t it.

    That old saying about taking responsibility for the consequences of your actions includes unintended and unforeseen consequences. Your motives can be as pure and noble as you wish, but it does not absolve you from responsibility for the consequences of choices made on the basis of those motives. Failure is still failure, no matter how principled.

  45. Bushfire Bill says:
    Wednesday, February 19, 2020 at 4:58 pm

    The posts here at PB supporting Sanders should be collated and published as one of the finest collections of suicide notes ever put together in the one place at the one time.
    ___________
    If he does go down he will have at least stood for something. Unlike the previous centrist Democrat candidate who stood for what? Wall Street?

  46. Pegasus says:
    Wednesday, February 19, 2020 at 5:08 pm

    Every child’s future under threat from climate change and poor health, major report warns

    “The task at hand is urgent and immense … There can be no excuses, and no time to lose.”

    True:

    1. Reduce personal housing footprint to the world average.
    2. Refuse to fly except in emergencies.
    3. Sell car.
    4. Eat low miles, low storage, low refined food, low irrigated foods and low storage energy foods.
    5. Eat no dairy and no beef products.
    6. Wear the same clothes and shoes until they wear out.
    7. Do not use cans. At all.
    8. Stop drinking alcohol. (Chardonnay Socialists will have a crises of conscience here. One bottle = 1.5 kg of CO2 emissions!).
    9. Stop smoking dope. All those lights!
    10. Do not live in houses which use hardwood in construction.
    11. Dispatch dogs and cats.
    12. Generate and store own energy.
    13. Don’t drink lattes.
    14. Stop using paper
    15. Reduce fashion consumption 90% by wearing clothes until they wear out. Life expectancy per item: 10 years. Plant 68 trees to offset the remaining fashion CO2 emissions.

  48. Firefox

    ‘The Malaysian Solution was illegal.’

    Yes, it was. But you seem to confuse that with immoral.

    What’s legal and illegal changes all the time.

    It was illegal for someone with dual citizenship to stand for Parliament — but we didn’t know that for over eighty years after federation.

    In the same way, it was assumed – by all sides of politics, including the Greens – that the government had the power to implement MS. The courts found differently, as they often do.

    ‘ It was also a policy designed to appease far-right racists.’

    It was a policy the UNHCR thought was better than letting people die at sea, and a policy supported by refugee advocates (to my surprise) at the time. Of course, I’m sure that you would be happy to label both groups as ‘right wing racists’ when they disagree with you.

  49. bakunin

    ‘You seem to think it’s something the Greens should have done to help Labor.’

    Oh, I thought we were discussing helping refugees, not increasing the Greens’ chances at the ballot box.

  50. USA Election, further details from the NBC/WSJ ‘Battleground’ poll mentioned upthread @4.55pm

    Most unpopular qualities for a candidate among voters, “reservations” + “very uncomfortable”

    Socialist: 67%
    Heart attack in past year: 57%
    Age 75+: 53%
    Self-funder: 41%
    Under 40: 40%
    Gay/lesbian: 27%
    Woman: 14%

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