There probably won’t be any polls this week, with the fortnightly Essential Research and tri-weekly Newspoll having dropped last week. But there will of course be a Northern Territory election on Saturday, which is the subject of its own thread here.
Other news:
• Sue Bailey of the Launceston Examiner reports that Eric Abetz is expected to retain the top position on the Tasmanian Liberals’ Senate ticket at the next election, contrary to earlier reports that Jonathan Duniam was planning to topple him, after the two “kissed and made up”. However, the report further says that “another senior Liberal” is doing the numbers for the third candidate who will be seeking re-election, Wendy Askew, who filled the Senate vacancy created last year when her brother, David Bushby, took up a diplomatic post in the United States. Also: “It is believed Prime Minister Scott Morrison wants the pre-selection delayed until next year so as not to be a distraction during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
• Michael Koziol of the Age/Herald has a story on the willing Liberal preselection contest in Warringah, which Tony Abbott lost to independent Zali Steggall at last year’s election. Abbott loyalists are said to be advancing the claim of Sacha Grebe, a former Scott Morrison staffer and employee of lobbying firm DPG Advisory, whose principal is David Gazard, a Morrison ally and candidate for Eden-Monaro in 2010. Grebe backer and local party activist Walter Villatora is engaged in a seemingly forlorn bid to have the preselection held as soon as possible. Others said to be in the hunt are “state MP Natalie Ward, state executive member Alex Dore and Menzies Research Centre manager Tim James”.
• There has been a change in the party balance of the Senate with Rex Patrick’s resignation from the Centre Alliance to sit as an independent. The Advertiser ($) has also reported the party’s two remaining members, Stirling Griff in the Senate and Mayo MP Rebekha Sharkie, are the subject of approaches from Liberals to defect to the party, although the notion is meeting bitter resistance from conservatives.
• The results of Tasmania’s recent upper house elections have been finalised, and as expected have resulted in the election of Labor’s Bastian Seidel in the seat of Huon south of Hobart, and of Liberal candidate Jo Palmer in Rosevears. The former was achieved over independent incumbent Robert Armstrong by the comfortable margin of 7.3% at the final count (12,284 votes to 9,152), but the latter proved a close run thing, with Jo Palmer landing 260 votes clear of independent candidate Janie Finlay, 11,492 votes (50.6%) or 11,232 (49.4%).
6.6 Earthquake in the Philippines.
New Strain of COVID19 found in Malaysia:
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/malaysia-detects-new-coronavirus-strain-thats-10-times-more-infectious/articleshow/77583189.cms
Frednk
“All the work going on in Victoria is about improving connectivity to the CBD. In the post pandemic Australia, are people still going to spend there day in a CBD office tower. I suspect the NBN is going to become much more important.
Clearly the solution is not to vote in the Liberals as they have the imagination of a git, but I am begining to suspect their may be money that is not going to return as planned and Victoria may have difficult times ahead.”
Yes there are transport planners I know looking at exactly that issue right now. A reduction in CBD office use is a certainty to some degree, the only question is how much? I suspect this is why Transurban are trying to back out of the Westgate deal, having begged their ten year extension on the citylink franchise.
Several factors will weigh negatively on CBD activity: the covid recession, firms taking advantage of newly gained work from home capability to reduce their office floorprint and rent, reduced uni funding, and the decline in international students. Most of the freeway projects assume demand growth. That won’t happen now for a while. At best we will limit decline.
In this light the harsh financial treatment of unis and international students may be quite short sighted. It could sink a few CBD property markets, never mind the freeway projects.
grace pettigrew
@broomstick33
·
1m
#abcnews on now, Nick McKim interrogating Border Force
———
Speaking of a barrel of larfs. Donald chips in.
Covid 19 coronavirus: Donald Trump on New Zealand’s new outbreak
“The problem is [there is a] big surge in New Zealand
———
Have we found the source? Can we start a conspiracy theory? Maybe Trump sent in a vial of the stuff.
As the 2020 Democratic National Convention opens on Monday, there are indications that Joe Biden is in a stronger position than any challenger to a sitting President since 1992, when Bill Clinton defeated George H. W. Bush
The New Yorker sees the Dems as having at least three things going for them, all directly related to the “repellent nature” of Trump:
* A Party unified (something that patently eluded them in the bitter Hillary-Sanders feud) against everything Trump
* Trump haplessly keeping attention on himself for all the wrong reasons when the focus should be shifting to the challenger
* Biden’s own lack of strong philosophical conviction provides him the chance to be seen as a ‘welcoming vessel’ for anyone wanting to save America from Trump
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/joe-bidens-moment-at-the-democratic-national-convention
Non @ #1188 Tuesday, August 18th, 2020 – 10:14 am
No, it’s a new coal mining project. It should be stopped, on principle alone.
Has just been confirmed by DHHS themelves that 99% of cases in the 2nd wave came from hotel quarantine. Rydges and Stamford hotels.
Australia’s luck ran out with Howard. The pointing finger will linger and hover over that name. For me, he was the call to death of the Australia I held in my dreams.
… if only it was this funny
https://youtu.be/0frHw-7J4Mk
I know you want the focus of debate to be the ideological assertion here but I am going to ask you (and other leftists who throw the term around) what war crimes has Biden allegedly committed.
Reminder: supporting a war isn’t a war crime. And being so flippant with the term actually does a disservice, as there are actual real war criminals, who are becoming harder to hold accountable because the discourse has muddied the meaning to increasingly seem to just be ‘hawkish’, ‘overly-patriotic’ or ‘opposed by leftists’ and going after them is being framed as an ideological witch-hunt.
I ask this rhetorically, of course. I don’t expect an actual thoughtful, adult answer to this.
frednk:
Or “variable contagiousness”, per Lizzie’s later linked article…
It’s started.
https://youtu.be/nGvkOMlR5Us
Live streaming for those with more time than I
https://youtu.be/hQq7ZSgvhtU
Simon Katich
You might be on to something, The Donald seems to have taken it personally 🙂
He was pretty cunning though as the current cluster is not related to ones found in the US. Sent a phial of Plague ‘very closely related’ to one found in the UK and Australia. He’s trying to frame ya 🙂
Three cases in NSW today, one of which was in hotel quarantine. Great numbers.
Firefox says:
Tuesday, August 18, 2020 at 10:05 am
…
Opposing Adani is actually all about transforming the economy and power generation. It will be people like you who continue to bury their heads in the sand while the climate crisis continues to worsen.
Can’t see the forest for the trees.
Mate that is not a tree, you’re dancing around a twig.
ItzaDream @ #1850 Tuesday, August 18th, 2020 – 10:23 am
The Boss would approve – that song was about rescue workers going up the WTC building on 9/11.
It’s about blood… It’s about blood
lizzie @ #1199 Tuesday, August 18th, 2020 – 10:28 am
Lizzie, not that it matters much, but this isn’t the “real” Cheryl Kernot is it?
” what war crimes has Biden allegedly committed.”
***
Senator Biden along with 28 other Democratic Senators voted to give Bush the authority to use force in Iraq and wage the war. The Democrats had the majoirty in the Senate at the time and could have stopped the war before it even started. Biden committed what is known as “the original sin”. He gave Bush the power and the ability to do what he did, meaning he is directly responsible for absolutely all of it.
So what war crimes you ask? The entire bloody war! That is Biden’s war crime – up to two and a half millions deaths and countless more lives destroyed forever. All of it.
United States :
Coronavirus Cases:
5,612,027
Deaths:
173,716
– 40,612 new cases and 589 new deaths in the United States
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Spray
Why do you doubt it? I’ve been following her on Twitter for ages and she gives me no reason to disbelieve her. She has good insight on much of gov business.
This is worth repeating, but will Angus ever be brought to book?
[‘Prime Minister Scott Morrison has asked for states to be lenient with their border restrictions, as Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says she is unlikely to let Victorians in before Christmas and South Australia prepares to instate its tightest ever restrictions on Friday.’]
Good luck with this one, Scott.
There was a degree of obscurantism on ABC TV News this morning and last night on 4 Corners.
The talk was of approaches to “the government” and how “the government” took days to respond to desperate calls for backup from the Epping Nursing home’s CEO..
It was not spelled out that the “the government” the CEO was referring to mostly meant “the Federal government”, not the Andrews government.
If it had been the Andrews government the CEO was complaining about, I think that would have been emphasized at any and every opportunity.
lizzie @ #1224 Tuesday, August 18th, 2020 – 11:25 am
No, it was a genuine question, as people are entitled to use whatever handle they want. I was confused by the Hunter Valley location, but on further inspection it checks out. Didn’t realise she lived up there now.
Yes, a good source of insight from an experienced campaigner.
I take heart from the fact that the current Federal Gummint is not only democratically elected but also the Gummint we deserve.
Hurrah for us.
Firefox @ #1222 Tuesday, August 18th, 2020 – 9:23 am
Did you ever stop to consider that the people Mr Biden was representing, ie the good burghers of Pennsylvania, actually supported the war. If so, Mr Biden’s real crime was representing the people’s wishes. A real hanging offence that one.
When compared to the usual razzmatazz of a Convention, it’s somewhat bizarre to view one virtually:
https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/TNC/TNC-191-E5-EX/TNC-191-E5-EX
Firefox @ #1221 Tuesday, August 18th, 2020 – 9:23 am
😆 😆 😆
If you ever get in legal trouble, don’t for a moment think of defending yourself!
BB. The only “backup” the Federal Government could have provided a nursing home would be from the military medical area. Outside of the specialised Therapeutic Goods Administration, the Federal Health and Aged Care Department is basically a couple of thousand pen pushers plus a few dozen medical advisers. They have no access to “backup.”
Military support would surely need to have been requested through the Vic Government.
So I reckon by “the Government”, the nursing home CEO probably meant the State Health Department.
DP, pedantic correction but he represented Delaware in the Senate.
Also, once again, supporting a war (or giving the President authority to start one in the Senate) is not a war crime.
Firefox, if his vote is unforgivable and disqualifying in your opinion, then so be it. It’s your right to believe that. But don’t be dishonest about it. He is not a war criminal. As I said above, abusing the term weakens the meaning of a real thing that we need to police more.
uh oh
I’m getting hooked. The mayor of Milwaukie got me ….
I wonder what will happen to property prices in Melbourne now. They recently finished building that tallest highrise in the southern hemisphere, full of 40sqm shoeboxes. The desirability of apartments would surely be smashed due to their higher risk for virus transmission and cramped nature for working from home.
Spray
Sorry if I sounded a bit snappy, but there are some people who think that Twitter is entirely artificial and question any tweets quoted.
God, Andrew Cuomo is so stereotypical New Yorker.
I wanna get him to say “I’m walkin here!”
Danama Papers
Wanted because they believed the shit being pumped out by the likes of Fox News and even the NYT and Washington Post ? The sort of crap that had a great percentage of ‘Mercans believing Saddam and Al Qaeda were in cahoots. Shite that Biden would have known was shite.
“Also, once again, supporting a war (or giving the President authority to start one in the Senate) is not a war crime.”
***
Oh yes it is. You can spin it any way you like to make yourself feel better about it but the fact is that Biden is directly responsible for the war taking place. Biden’s war crime is the Iraq War.
meher baba:
The Commonwealth regulates Aged Care Facilities, including the infection control capability of those facilities.
State Health departments then have to provide “backup” infection control for frontline infection control over which they have no influence (and which in some cases doesn’t really exist)
That’s not “backup”, it’s a total fuckup, and doomed to fail under stress.
Was this ever proven? I was never sure.
My biggest fear post pandemic is that the government has been so busy muddying the water and assigning blame that they won’t do anything about the problems this virus has uncovered.
The inconsistencies around responsibility for quarantine in particular are of concern. Nothing in the RubyPrincess fiasco has shaken my belief that it was a federal responsibility to quarantine the ship and that NSW health department were only responsible for the health response for the ill.
The same inconsistencies apply to Victoria, the people in the hotel were in quarantine, the advice to the security was the federal advice. Why would you issue federal advice if it was a state responsibility.
If as a nation we don’t have clear cut processes around returning travellers we are at risk of history repeating itself. It is still my believe that the premiers only took on hotel quarantine because Scrooge Morrison didn’t want to pay for it.
The advice re masks is federal advice, the advisory committee is again federal. If the growing body of evidence shows that super spreader events are related to aerosol transmission, who will get the blame. Somehow Morrison will throw it back on the states, that his health committees don’t have experts in infection control spread is not the states fault, again it is Federal.
The decisions to not support international students and the large number of visa holders with any financial certainty is yet another federal misstep that he has still not acknowledged.
My biggest concern is the decisions that are being made are all trending towards minimal standards at every level be it aged care, PPE, financing insecure workers and now the disability sector is being under resourced.
The fact that Morrison won’t even fully support the Premiers who are doing the heavy lifting in regards to health response and containment is not unexpected but decidedly unappreciated by me.
I doubt whether the Joyce-Taylor-Caymans scandal will be taken up by the MSM, when there are easy stories to put together about slack security guards, record death numbers, fantasy yarns concerning vaccines and Andrew Bolt’s tree change.
And of course the Morrison government gets away with just about everything. It’s pretty sickening, actually.
But also in there as a reason is that Michael West is an internet journalist, not much above a Twitter Tragic really (in the MSN’S eyes that is). He doesn’t have a seat in the Press Gallery and he doesn’t simply report what the rest of the media pack are instructed is the talking point of the day. He’s never invited onto Insiders (I guess because he’d hate to be thought of as one, and the feeling’s probably mutual). He actually goes out and, rather rogueishly, finds his own stories too. Cheeky bugger. Can’t have that.
Listening to Greg Combet on RN this morning, it was a great loss for Labor that he stepped down ‘over health concerns’.
You havent just hit that for six. You knocked it right out to downtown nonsenseville.
As a senator he relied on the evidence put forward by US intelligence that Iraq had WMD. Had he not voted for the war, and WMD were found or used against the US or its allies, it would have labelled him forever as a traitor.
Besides, most of the atrocities of that war were committed in the aftermath. That can not be blamed on a senator. The blame for starting the war and its aftermath lies fairly and squarely on the incompetent hawks in control, the impotent puppet president, the Republican party that was determined to take electoral advantage of 9/11, big oil, and the intrusion of politics into the intelligence community and the way it presents its data. If you were going to blame one person – blame Dick.
Considering the circumstances, there was no way you would have gotten the Democrats to vote as a block against the war. It was incredible one Republican voted against it although he was always a floater.
Bushfire
Yes. Gotta be one of the chosen pack to be believed. 🙁
Assantdj @ #1242 Tuesday, August 18th, 2020 – 11:55 am
Time for Labor to step up.
Roll out the talent and Scrooter to the wall.
Giddyup.
mundo @ #1248 Tuesday, August 18th, 2020 – 12:00 pm
…nail Scrooter to the wall…