Bega Valley Shire mayor Kristy McBain has been anointed by Anthony Albanese as Labor’s candidate for the Eden-Monaro by-election, despite the fact that a designated nominations period had yet to expire. The Nationals have justified their optimism by providing The Australian ($) with an internal poll conducted immediately after Mike Kelly’s retirement announcement on Thursday, the paper’s report of which begins thus: “NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro would win the Eden-Monaro by-election if he chooses to stand” (UPDATE: See account of weekend developments at the bottom of the post). This fact turns out to have been established by a 52-48 lead over Kristy McBain, and primary votes that have Barilaro leading hypothetical Liberal candidate Jim Molan by 30% to 21%, with McBain on 35% and Greens candidate Patrick McGinlay on 8%.
However, a report by David Crowe of the Age/Herald ($) suggests state Transport Minister and Bega MP Andrew Constance has been responsive to colleagues’ suggestions he should seek Liberal preselection, and Barilaro has said he will not run if Constance does. Furthermore, “some state sources said there was still a chance both men would pull back from the contest”. In that case, it would seem Fiona Kotvojs, who ran at the election last year, would get another run for the Liberals, and the Nationals would presumably go back to being uncompetitive. Candidacies of either or both of Barilaro and Constance respectively raise the prospect of state by-elections for the seats of Monaro (Nationals margin 11.6%) and Bega (Liberal margin 6.9%), neither of which are unloseable by the recent historic standards of by-elections.
In other news, Roy Morgan has conducted its occasional exercise of publishing the latest results of its federal voting polling, which these days it keeps to itself except when it believes it has identified a newsworthy angle to the results. Onthis occasion its a forceful swing to the Coalition that was missed by Newspoll, such that it now leads 51.5-48.5 after trailing 53-47 in polling from mid-March (compared with 51-49 from the Newspoll of the time). On the primary vote, the Coalition was up seven to 43.5%, Labor down three to 33%, the Greens up half to 11.5% and One Nation down one to 3%. Among the unanswered questions are what impact an apparent chopping and changing of survey methods may have had, with this latest result said to combine phone and online polling for a sample of 2806 over the two weekends just past. Many others besides have been canvassed by Kevin Bonham.
Then there’s the latest effort from Dynata for the Institute of Public Affairs, this time concerning coronavirus restrictions, which I’m not going to say anything about except that it’s out there. Among the questions respondents were invited to agree or disagree with was the following: “There should be an immediate easing of petty restrictions with appropriate social distancing in place”. If I were completing such a survey, my reaction to this question would be to recognise that I was being manipulated and refuse to complete it, and I suspect I’m not alone.
UPDATE (4/5/20): Conflicting signals on the John Barilaro front this morning, courtesy of apparently separate sources both said to be close to him. The Sydney Morning Herald ($) reported overnight that Barilaro would formally announce his intention not to run this morning, but The Australian ($) has been told that this is wrong and that Barilaro is still considering his position. The Herald reports claims from Liberals that Crosby Textor internal polling shows Andrew Constance would win the seat in canter, and that the state Liberals consider Constance’s seat of Bega to be easier to defend at a by-election than Barilaro’s seat of Monaro, which might fall to Shooters Fishers and Farmers or such like. Barilaro and Constance are apparently both on the record saying they will drop out if the other runs rather than expose the state government to two by-elections, which merely raises the question of which claim takes precedence.
bucephalus
“Why do you think that they paint that picture?”
Well the main charater of the film ‘Collapse’ later killed himself, perhaps out of despair.
The premise, regardless of how immediate the threat is, seems pretty disastrous, and the case that it’s in the foreseeable future is compelling.
Cud Chewer @ #1030 Monday, May 4th, 2020 – 2:50 pm
Later that day, Mundo said ‘Chewy, you’re his speech writer/epithet spinner.
I think it would be better coming from you.’
WWP
Precisely.
mundo
I had a meeting with Albo’s (then) Chief of Staff last year. I wasn’t impressed at his listening skills.
lizzie says:
Monday, May 4, 2020 at 9:32 am
There’s a discrepancy in everything this government “gives”. I think it stems from lack of planning as well as incompetence.
Space Kidette
@SpaceKidette
·
20m
Spoke to an accountant friend. He has over 700 business clients.
NONE qualify for jobseeker payments.
240 have closed and are filing for bankruptcy.
———————————
Of course they wouldn’t qualify for jobseeker because that is newstart by another name.
If people on twitter want to make points they need to get the right payment first.
Bucephalus @ #1026 Monday, May 4th, 2020 – 2:44 pm
“Ecofascist”? Really? 🙂
Agree, this is a very ordinary action by an individual Policeman which tarnishes the reputation of the Force in the broader community.
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/dean-laidley-mugshot-leak-significant-breach-of-privacy-police-say-20200504-p54pj8.html
Mexicanbeemer
Space Kidette is a bright lady. Perhaps she got the Job— name wrong in her haste.
P1,
It’s a couple of stations rains further up the line from imperious bossy boots.
PeeBee @ #1047 Monday, May 4th, 2020 – 1:21 pm
Where did I say that?
But it’s a much more complicated topic and relationship than what Boerwar makes out.
Cud Chewer @ #1050 Monday, May 4th, 2020 – 3:27 pm
Gartrell?
Peak Oil has to occur by definition at some point, because there isn’t an infinite supply of oil on Earth. The question is what comes first, death by peak oil or death by burning too much oil?
The Greens have a comprehensive suite of policies that simply do not relate to each other at all.
Each set of policies is a grab bag bearing little or no relationship to the next grab bag.
Thus the Greens have all sorts of policies for saving biodiversity, doubling the conservation estate, protecting pristine wilderness, saving the forests, stopping coastal development, cutting back water use, reducing CO2 emissions to zero net long, long before 2050, stopping GMOs, replanting farmlands, improving urban amenity, improving living conditions, and stopping the Anthropocene Extinction Event, while ALSO doubling the population by 2050.
The Greens New Deal is some sort of magic fairy dust that is supposed to make these irreconcilable policies cohere.
The Greens address this irroncilable melange of idealism by engaging getting down amongst the weeds and ignoring the big picture.
So, Leong fights to the death on 20 ha of clearing for housing. How many hectares are going to be cleared to fit an additional 25 million people into Australia? Leong does not know and obviously does not care a rat’s arse.
So, Peg cuts’n’pastes Leong’s 20 ha myopia as received wisdom about the big picture and the long view.
The Greens used to be far better at this sort of thing. They used to care about, and understand the environment.
Not any more. They are manning the Culture War barricades, trying to ignite moral panic, and trying to harvest the astroturfed results. The Greens’ environmental policy integrity has been defenestrated.
Alpha Zero
Death by burning too much oil is pretty much locked in., there is no reason we can’t be stupid enough to have both peak oil and death by too much oil at the same time.
Lizzie
I thought she use to post here.
Mexicanbeemer
Yes, she did. I’ve forgotten why she left. It might have been boredom. 😉
BiTJ
Simplistic?
Assuming that sustainability in the broad would be indicated, inter alia, by environmental indicators not going backwards, out of all the myriad environmental variables available, name one single biophysical environmental variable that has not gone backwards as Indonesia moved from a population of 70 million to a population of 270 million.
Then, just to be simplistically balanced, make a list of dozens upon dozens of environmental variables that have gone backwards as Indonesia has moved from a population of 70 million to a population of 270 million.
Then, as a bit of simplistic fun, predict with sangfroid a single environmental variable that will improve materially should Indonesia double its population to over half a billion by 2050.
This is deliberately misleading. And people are being misled.
lizzie
That’s exactly the kind of thing I expected. A lot of people being given the false belief that the app somehow makes them immune.
But that’s the whole point. Its about luring people into a false sense of security so that they all go out and have fun and we can get back to where we should have been which was having the virus spread through the community.
Alpha Zero
An engineer with Conoco Philips told me that there is still a vast amount of oil out there . Rather than supply he said the ‘decider’ is whether people will be prepared to pay the sort of $s needed to extract it from where it is. We’ve tapped all the “easy” bits.
I’ve just got back from the shopping centre, and the social distancing was very noticeable. Lots of standing aside and keeping distance. People seemed solemn and quiet.
Alpha
The world responded to the shrinking reserves of easily accessed oil by harvesting more unconventional oil and gas. But I really think peak oil won’t happen. The demand for the stuff will dry up.
Which city is that lizzie?
I’m sure there’s a perfectly simple explanation – or two or three.
lizzie
well if I’m in the pub or at footie and a “covid” is near me the phone will tell me and I can move. Shite?.
Now I know why the Liberals WON the last election!.
The countries full of idiots!.
Cud Chewer
It’s not a city. It’s a town in the Yarra/Warburton Valley.
poroti
And meanwhile the cost of renewable energy is still coming down and that can be turned into other sinks and carriers of energy, liquid fuels, hydrogen, steel, concrete.. etc.
One estimate I saw was that to supply hydrogen production and electric cars we need an installed capacity of solar/wind that is 7 times greater than our current electricity supply. In other words, the issue of variability goes away simply having massive overcapacity. And yes you adjust the “loads” such as hydrogen generation to suit the “excess” capacity at any given time.
Boerwar @ #1065 Monday, May 4th, 2020 – 1:44 pm
With declining birthrates Indonesia’s population is projected to be about 330 million by 2050 and that is nearing it’s expected peak, after which they think it will start to decline, so your simplistic nonsense fails at the first hurdle.
https://www.populationpyramid.net/indonesia/2050/
lizzie that’s good news that people are still well behaved.
Trump administration pushing to rip global supply chains from China: officials
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration is “turbocharging” an initiative to remove global industrial supply chains from China as it weighs new tariffs.
Now, economic destruction and the massive U.S. coronavirus death toll are driving a government-wide push to move U.S. production and supply chain dependency away from China, even if it goes to other more friendly nations instead, current and former senior U.S. administration officials said.
“We’ve been working on [reducing the reliance of our supply chains in China] over the last few years but we are now turbo-charging that initiative,” Keith Krach, undersecretary for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment at the U.S. State Department told Reuters.
The U.S. Commerce Department, State and other agencies are looking for ways to push companies to move both sourcing and manufacturing out of China.
The U.S. government is working with Australia, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and Vietnam to “move the global economy forward,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said April 29.
These discussions include “how we restructure … supply chains to prevent something like this from ever happening again,” Pompeo said.
Full article –
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-china/trump-administration-pushing-to-rip-global-supply-chains-from-china-officials-idUSKBN22G0BZ
As someone who needs to know about JobKeeper for a small not-for-profit, I can attest that “JobKeeper” and “JobSeeker” are too similar.
Presumably “JobSeeker” was chosen to differentiate between the “deserving” unemployed now and the “undeserving” unemployed prior to covid-19.
citizen @ #1079 Monday, May 4th, 2020 – 2:00 pm
The decision to change the name of Newstart to Jobseeker was arrived at long before coronavirus happened. The only presumption that can be made about the name change is that Newstart was a completely inappropriate bit of Newspeak.
Northern Territory has had zero cases of local transmission for 28 days.
That’s the WHO definition of elimination.
South Australia has had zero cases for 11 days.
Western Australia has had zero cases for 4 days and zero cases of local transmission for 9 days
ACT has had zero cases of local transmission for 20 days
Danama
Whatever the history of this, the bit of ideology that says that unemployed people are lazy bastards that deserved to be punished at $40 a day is going to be hard to sell from now on.
12 days of no new cases for SA
The state only has seven active cases, the same as yesterday.
This means 427 people have recovered from COVID-19, which is 98 per cent of cases.
dave
I wonder if the US will also be pushing to source more stuff from Taiwan? 🙂
I always think that the Victorian Liberals’ disgraceful activities on the EW Link should mean that they would be unelectable for a generation…. but they have pretty much achieved that status without any help from anyone or anything.
BiTJ
Simplistic?
Assuming that sustainability in the broad would be indicated, inter alia, by environmental indicators not going backwards, out of all the myriad environmental variables available, name one single biophysical environmental variable that has not gone backwards as Indonesia moved from a population of 70 million to a population of 270 million.
Then, just to be simplistically balanced, make a list of dozens upon dozens of environmental variables that have gone backwards as Indonesia has moved from a population of 70 million to a population of 270 million.
Then, as a bit of simplistic fun, predict with sangfroid a single environmental variable that will improve materially should Indonesia double its population to 330 million by 2050.
Whichever MP is on Karvelas (Minister for Charities?) is insisting that people must come off these “special” grants asap (implying that the gov will provide jobs – ha! ha!).
Hillbilly
WA is down to 15 active cases
Victoria is down to 78
In fact the only state that’s really lagging is NSW.
Ah, it was Zed Seselja.
Guardian
In the 1930s my grandfather was worried by reports that known existing coal reserves would run out, probably not in his lifetime, but probably in his children’s. With coal being the main driver of energy back then and with no talk of global warming, so far as I am aware, you can see why my grandfather was worried this would bring about the collapse of civilisation as we knew it.
All I can think is, what a shame my grandfather wasn’t right. If we had passed peak coal and peak oil, at least we wouldn’t be having these pointless debates about the alleged superiority of coal-fired base load and alleged inadequacies of renewable energy when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.
Who cares if there’s enough coal, oil and gas to keep burning for the next 100 years?
Fossil fuels are killing our environment and we need to stop using them ASAP. For God’s sake leave them all in the earth and let’s start moving towards renewable energy NOW.
https://history.aip.org/climate/timeline.htm
And so on…
Cud Chewer @ #1082 Monday, May 4th, 2020 – 2:11 pm
Indeed. As I have pointed out in earlier posts, most if not all, of the new recipients of the dole (let’s call it by its traditional name) are still going to be on it when the extra payment expires after 5 months (not the 6 claimed by the government as I have also pointed out).
This is where Morrison has been too clever by half. Facing a backlash from people getting the dole for the first time who would’ve been horrified at the $40 a day it was, they decided to effectively double it for a limited period (5 not 6 months).The real backlash will begin when it’s cut back.
Had they done what every man and his dog had advised and raised it by $95 a week, the payment would have been sustainable, and whereas people wouldn’t have been happy about it, they wouldn’t be faced with a massive cut to the payment after 5 (or in some cases 4 and a half) months time.
How many old people are getting upset about this now?
Lizzie,
My 90 year old mother (who is very tech aware) is in aged care (NSW)
She emailed me asking for help with covidsafe app installation on her iphone
I told her it was unlikely to help her, but she was adamant
So, I talked her through it.
She’s happier, but, sadly, deluded about how it will protect her.
She is very sure she is not safe because of the news reports about Newmarch
Re: climate change, nothing new…
A NZ 1912 newspaper story, and others..
https://qz.com/817354/scientists-have-been-forecasting-that-burning-fossil-fuels-will-cause-climate-change-as-early-as-1882/
Schools are reopening, so here’s a guide to the situation in each state and territory
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-04/australian-schools-reopening-after-coronavirus-closures/12211526
Maude Lynne
There are so many examples as you have described, and not all “oldies”. The LNP should be shot for misleading people like this. 😡