Groom at the top

Eight LNP candidates nominate to fill John McVeigh’s vacancy in the Queensland seat of Groom; and the federal government says it will act to retain the Northern Territory’s two seats in the House of Representatives.

Miscellaneous developments from the past week:

• The Toowoomba Chronicle reports eight candidates have nominated for Liberal National Party preselection for the Groom by-election, of whom the front-runners are Rebecca Vonhoff, a Toowoomba councillor; Garth Hamilton, a businessman; Sara Hales, former general manager of Wellcamp Airport; and Shane Charles, former Toowoomba and Surat Basin Enterprise chief executive. Also in the field are “Elders Rural Services’ Andrew Meara … race car driver Daniel Cassidy, Australian Lot Feeders president Bryce Camm and Doctor David van Gend”, the latter being a firebrand social conservative whom the outgoing member, John McVeigh, defeated for preselection when he succeeded Ian Macfarlane in 2016. Notably absent from the list is Senator Matt Canavan, despite a decision by the state executive to leave it to the branch membership whether the seat should go to a Liberal, as it has since 1988, or a National. The date of the by-election is yet to be confirmed.

• Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack said on Thursday that the government would introduce a bill that will ensure the Northern Territory retains its two seats in the House of Representatives, though by what mechanism is unclear. A Labor-sponsored bill currently before the Senate provides a crude guarantee of a second Northern Territory seat (without extending the courtesy to the Australian Capital Territory, albeit that its population is such that the question does not arise), but when the same issue emerged before the 2004 election, it was dealt with through a technical tweak to the population statistics used to determine seat entitlements. The bottom line is that the Labor-held seats of Solomon and Lingiari, created when the territory first became entitled to a second seat in 2001 and respectively covering Darwin and the rest of the territory, will continue to exist despite enrolments of less than two-thirds the national norm. It also means the House of Representatives

• The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters is conducting an inquiry into the “future conduct of elections operating during times of emergency situations”, encompassing “restrictions arising from a health pandemic”, “access to polling places during times of natural disasters”, “other potential drivers of social restrictions, such as future civil unrest, or international conflict” and “alternative voting methods including early, remote and postal voting”.

• The West Australian has a Painted Dog Research poll of 932 respondents in WA showing 64% want the state’s hard border maintained beyond December, with 36% favouring a resumption of travel with the eastern states.Hou

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.

590 comments on “Groom at the top”

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  2. Re the pink batt and the following statement. It was an amazing coincidence that the roof fires stopped immediately after the 2013 election.

    “The occurrence of fires does not appear to have been an issue of particular concern, other than to the media”

  3. laughtong
    If this is rolled out to all Jobseekers it will be a death knell for ScoMo
    a) It will cost the Govt millions above the cost of the welfare itself around $7000 per card.
    b) It will put those receiving it and their familes further away from the LNP.
    It is so limiting on what you can do with the it. Can only shop in certain stores, can’t shop at markets or Op Shops to get a better deal. That’s only one example.
    Most people on welfare can manage their money fairly well. They do NOT need this paternalistic rubbish and money maker for the Nats.
    ——————————————
    laughtong
    It is also completely unnecessary because the state can already place people who cannot manage their own money under administration but this is classic culture war stuff. The Liberals cannot get past this stuff.

  4. From the comments on the Age blog

    Peta Credlin back again, dominating with her narrow agenda. I am so over this. I want to hear what is happening about the current numbers. The media is not the Victorian people. Get real. We still have a public health crisis that fundamentally we are now close to controlling. Unlike what is happening in Europe right now. A little perspective would go a long way.

  6. Laughtong

    Whoever wrote that is spot on.

    We are in a global pandemic. And the rest of the world is going through a second wave which may be as bad if not worse, than the first.
    This focus on hotel quarantine inquiry is ridiculous
    The report is due in a few weeks. Whatever it says. It doesn’t change the fact that we are dealing with a highly contagious virus

    Mind you credlin and co are the very same creatures who dont see anything wrong with trump.

  9. I just caught up with this story being spread of a vatican official allegedly paying bribes for false testimony to convict George Pell.
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/oct/10/claim-bribes-paid-to-frame-george-pell-as-sex-abuser-ludicrous-complainants-father-says?utm_term=08e162d7519b2cf6d113741c85760714&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayAUS&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTAU_email

    This is a serious claim of alleged criminal conduct. If true it should be prosecuted. If false those making it should be prosecuted. Either way, vatican officials seem to have fairly decisively parted company with those ten commandments they refer to in their marketing brochures. Certainly the bit about “not bearing false witness”.

  11. Following on from:

    lizziesays:
    Saturday, October 10, 2020 at 12:13 pm
    @LordofWentworth
    ·
    12h
    Dozens of super high calibre @abcnews qualifed journos leave, while political stooge Credlin presents herself as a self appointed journo

    Does anyone know whether there exists anywhere a list of all the ABC journalists who have left the organization in the past few months?

  12. @AnodyneParadigm
    ·
    42m
    Today, as the Queensland election kicks off, #cronullavirus breaks out on Gold Coast. Under cover of so-called presser, Morrison monopolises 15 minutes of @abcnews today, campaigning for QLD LNP.
    Grubby, dirty, low politics…and an abuse of national broadcaster #qldpol #auspol

  13. Queensland is just about world’s best standard when it’s comes to restricting corona virus transmission and is not alone in closing its borders. Gosh!! some of the flak the Qld. Premier has been getting is outrageous. From the Scomo,Mat Corman down to perpetually sour faced Gladys and now the self righteous NSW health minister going ballistic. All to prop up the very uninspiring Qld. opposition who say now they would be following health advice like the government( only somehow doing it better?). Scomo and co. should be applauding Qld.and I can guarantee everybody life is pretty normal up here with virtually zero chance of contracting the dreaded virus.Once again like pink bats it’s easy to pick out the odd misjudged discision when overwhelmingly things have gone pretty well. As a Qld. Public Servant who survived the Newman debacle here’s to the LNP getting their just desserts in the election.

  14. All they said was, “Sorry for your loss”.

    Marie Jentner’s husband was dying when Centrelink gave her some more bad news: she was now a jobseeker.

    At 62, she had quit her job of 27 years to care for Siegfried, who had testicular cancer and couldn’t walk or look after himself. When he was moved into palliative care the following year, Jentner’s carer’s payment was cancelled and she was put on the lower Newstart allowance.

    “I retired in 2017 to stay home and look after my husband,” Jentner, 64, tells Guardian Australia. “I’ve worked nearly 45 years of my life, and there’s no way I wanted to go back to work. And they said, ‘Well, you need to do something because the government has changed things. You need to be on Newstart. You could do either community work or volunteering.’”
    …
    Jentner was not sure when she would lose Siegfried, her husband of 42 years. She felt she had no choice but to meet her “mutual obligations” at the nursing home in the Adelaide suburb of Rosewater, where he was dying.

    “The lady said, ‘You realise then, that while your husband is here, you can’t sit with him – you need to go, you know, to the other residents, and chat with them.’

    “He was really upset because he wanted me to stay with him and I was really angry because I didn’t know when he was going to die on me.

    “Even though he was in the nursing home, while I was with other patients, I thought, ‘Well, during my lunchbreak while they are having their dinner, I’m going to sit with my husband for 45 minutes.’”

    In November, two months after Jentner was forced to start volunteering, Siegfried died. As she grieved, Jentner also informed Centrelink of his passing.

    Under Department of Human Services policy, people who are eligible for a widow allowance – as Jentner was – are not required to meet any mutual obligations.

    But she said no one told her. She kept volunteering at the nursing home in the belief she was required to if she wanted to keep her payments.

    She was also forced to pay back $684.10 after Centrelink said she had been overpaid the carer’s allowance.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/aug/20/really-upset-welfare-changes-forced-woman-to-volunteer-as-husband-was-dying?CMP=share_btn_tw

  15. The position of Judge Andrew may reflect what confronts magistrates who, New South Wales, are compelled to sit in country jurisdictions for several years.

    It’s very hard to make a friend or socialise when you’re a Magistrate given your roles and responsibilities and the isolation has had consequences in the past.

    There have been suicides in recent years among the Victorian magistrates.

  16. Lizzie

    Did Scomo get a chance while campaigning to explain what the Federal foreign affairs department is doing to prevent foreign diplomats and their families exempt from quarantine rules spreading Covid19 when they travel here? The Indonesian family with recent positive tests were returning from a country where the disease is completely out of control, so this was a predictable problem.

    Also a question – while campaigning in a State election are my taxes still being paid to Scomo to act as Prime Minister of the country? And is he using the RAAF plane or is the Liberal party paying his way?

  17. Kevin Rudd
    @MrKRudd
    ·
    17m
    Thank you Australians for your huge response to the #MurdochRoyalCommission National Petition. So many thousands have tried to sign that it’s apparently triggered the Parliament’s cyber defences. So please be patient and don’t give up. We’ve been on to @AboutTheHouse to fix it.

  18. Explainer

    The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, is on Queensland’s Gold Coast joining the state’s election campaign and he’s giving a media conference.

    He’s of course wearing the election campaign uniform of choice – a hi-vis vest.

    Morrison spent the past 14 days in Canberra, which meant he could fly straight to Queensland without the need for quarantine.

    Morrison had another gentle jab at Queensland’s ongoing border closure to Victoria and most of New South Wales and the implications it has for tourism in the sunshine state.

  19. I’m gobsmacked every time Gladys talks about closed borders. Not only has she shut the border to Victoria but it’s been incredibly mismanaged.

    For example, I applied for an exemption to cross the border for work. I had to supply letters from my work, a detailed trip itinerary, guarantee that I would have certain items with me at all times, that I would not leave the car in transit unless I wore gloves, a mask and used sanitiser, would not leave the premises once I was there, etc etc — and was knocked back.

    Two days later, I was eligible for a permit which would let me cross the border for any purpose I liked, with none of the above restrictions.

    There’s been no rhyme or reason to any of it.

  21. I am still waiting for gladys explanation why is she not criticising the liberal party government in Tasmania for not allowing nsw residents entering Tasmania

  23. lizzie @ #114 Saturday, October 10th, 2020 – 1:28 pm

    All they said was, “Sorry for your loss”.

    Marie Jentner’s husband was dying when Centrelink gave her some more bad news: she was now a jobseeker.

    At 62, she had quit her job of 27 years to care for Siegfried, who had testicular cancer and couldn’t walk or look after himself. When he was moved into palliative care the following year, Jentner’s carer’s payment was cancelled and she was put on the lower Newstart allowance.

    “I retired in 2017 to stay home and look after my husband,” Jentner, 64, tells Guardian Australia. “I’ve worked nearly 45 years of my life, and there’s no way I wanted to go back to work. And they said, ‘Well, you need to do something because the government has changed things. You need to be on Newstart. You could do either community work or volunteering.’”
    …
    Jentner was not sure when she would lose Siegfried, her husband of 42 years. She felt she had no choice but to meet her “mutual obligations” at the nursing home in the Adelaide suburb of Rosewater, where he was dying.

    “The lady said, ‘You realise then, that while your husband is here, you can’t sit with him – you need to go, you know, to the other residents, and chat with them.’

    “He was really upset because he wanted me to stay with him and I was really angry because I didn’t know when he was going to die on me.

    “Even though he was in the nursing home, while I was with other patients, I thought, ‘Well, during my lunchbreak while they are having their dinner, I’m going to sit with my husband for 45 minutes.’”

    In November, two months after Jentner was forced to start volunteering, Siegfried died. As she grieved, Jentner also informed Centrelink of his passing.

    Under Department of Human Services policy, people who are eligible for a widow allowance – as Jentner was – are not required to meet any mutual obligations.

    But she said no one told her. She kept volunteering at the nursing home in the belief she was required to if she wanted to keep her payments.

    She was also forced to pay back $684.10 after Centrelink said she had been overpaid the carer’s allowance.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/aug/20/really-upset-welfare-changes-forced-woman-to-volunteer-as-husband-was-dying?CMP=share_btn_tw

    This story resonates with me. My friend in Tassie was in a similar situation although allowed to keep the carer payment while her husband was in hospital for a long period.
    Of course at 58 and unable to drive she was moved onto Newstart once he died. Volunteering etc part of her life and in her previous location doing her a lot of good. Now she is just waiting for some options to open up again to keep the JSA off her back. Waste of everyones time her applying for whatever number of jobs each month. And all that for the pittance she is given. Unfortunately we have to wait until 67 – another 4 years – to access an Aged pension.

  27. Aqualung says:
    Saturday, October 10, 2020 at 12:23 pm
    Re the pink batt and the following statement. It was an amazing coincidence that the roof fires stopped immediately after the 2013 election.

    “The occurrence of fires does not appear to have been an issue of particular concern, other than to the media”
    ____________________-
    Presumably because proper controls where put in place by a new Minister?

  31. Lars Von Trier

    Presumably because proper controls where put in place by a new Minister?

    Nope. It was just fires were no longer on the agenda set by Rupes and co. It had served its purpose. As was known at the time the number of roof fires during the Pink Batts ‘reign of terror’ were actually below average. Quinceland’s super slack OHS laws and the sainted “small business owners’ were the big killers.

  35. This YouGov poll found Biden would trounce Pence 49-42 in a Presidential head-to-head match up. No wonder, Pence is a religious fanatic, a homophobe and an enabler of Trump’s disastrous first term.

    YouGov, in some of the first polling conducted since Mr Trump contracted the coronavirus, found Mr Pence would lose nationally to Mr Biden 42 per cent to 49 per cent. That is a smaller margin than the same survey found for a Trump-Biden matchup, with the president trailing 43 per cent to 51 percent.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election/2020-election-polls-trump-mike-pence-joe-biden-poll-debates-b836421.html

  37. Lars Von Trier
    No Lars, to blame were slack arses ignoring even the lax Queensland regulations and the slack Qld. regs themselves.. Regs that were not doubt slack thanks to the White Shoe Brigade and all those Qld. ‘developers’. “red tape” cuts profits dontja know.

  39. – Biden could get sick
    – The Ukraine nonsense could unearth something actually momentous
    – Harris could say something that scares the pants off Republicans swaying towards Biden

    The third on this list is my great fear.

    Very unlikely to happen. Kamala Harris one of the most scripted and vapid politicians on the scene today.

  40. While it was happening the pink batts issue could easily have been defended. Rudd’s decision to acquiesce was the beginning of the end of his government.

  44. While it was happening the pink batts issue could easily have been defended. Rudd’s decision to acquiesce was the beginning of the end of his government.

    Absolutely. I was living in the UK at the time, but could see it from there.

  45. @TPythia
    Hartcher also claims Australian politics is a “civil debate”. Utter fantasy. Morrison turns his back on the oposition in Parliament. Porter shuts debate down. #ScottyTheBully screeched about “extortion” in his “40 ships” lie. Morrison fights dirty ALL THE TIME. #auspol

  47. While it was happening the pink batts issue could easily have been defended. Rudd’s decision to acquiesce was the beginning of the end of his government.

    100 percent true. The Rudd Government should have argued that the home insulation program brought a higher standard of safety to a sector that previously had terrible standards. And that in a free society it is not possible for the government to prevent every single act of recklessness by shoddy contractors. And that the government was committed to raising safety standards and forcing shoddy contractors out of business.

    Does anyone believe that the government has a Minority Report style of precognition technology that permits it to predict the future and prevent every single horrible event from happening? The Rudd Government allowed the media and its enemies to hold it to this impossible standard of care.

    The learned helplessness of Labor runs deep. That helps to explain why Rudd responded as he did to the pink batts story.

  48. Labor should return fire to Morrison cronies and the corrupt foreign own libs/nats propaganda units

    If they Blame Labor/Rudd for pink Batts , then Morrison and his cronies are to blame for work for the dole deaths

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