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. Princeplanet
    Re the Courier Mail. I was over in Brisvegas for a few weeks for work a long time back . It was about the time CanJoh was mayor->mp or just after. The paper was waging quite a campaign against him. Some of the revelations should have stopped CanJoh . Other Rupert Rags were being nice but the C-M really had it in for him. Not sure why.

  6. A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania seeking to block the use of drop boxes as receptacles for mail ballots, require ballot signatures to match voter registration records and allow nonresident poll watchers at polling places, ruling that the president’s claims of potential fraud were “speculative.”

    In a sharply worded opinion issued Saturday morning, U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan of the Western District of Pennsylvania ruled that the Trump campaign has no standing because of the lack of evidence of actual fraud.

    “While Plaintiffs may not need to prove actual voter fraud, they must at least prove that such fraud is ‘certainly impending,’ ” Ranjan wrote. “They haven’t met that burden. At most, they have pieced together a sequence of uncertain assumptions.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pennsylvania-trump-lawsuit-voting/2020/10/10/44c16ba6-0b2c-11eb-859b-f9c27abe638d_story.html

  9. P1

    Someone said they won’t fix the petition web until Monday. Several have already signed this morning – seems to be a matter of chance.

  15. “Trump will achieve one thing. The first yank president who has not started a war since………….. a bloody long time.”

    ***

    He has certainly continued many conflicts though. For starters, American forces are still engaged in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Syria, and of course Iraq…

  18. And further welcome news from the judiciary. Honestly, today’s Republicans won’t be happy until nobody but their own voters are able to cast a ballot.

    A federal judge has blocked Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to limit the number of places election ballots can be dropped off to one per county, saying the decree issued a month before the election would be unfair to voters, particularly the elderly and disabled.

    The Republican governor’s proclamation “likely violates their fundamental right to vote,” U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pitman wrote in a 46-page ruling Friday issuing an injunction against the governor’s rule.

    Pitman called the decision to have a single ballot drop-off location per county in the weeks leading up to the election “perplexing,” particularly since there will be multiple drop-off points per county on Election Day and since the state had already opened satellite drop-off locations within counties before the governor’s Oct. 1 proclamation.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/judge-blocks-texas-governors-restriction-on-mail-ballot-drop-off/2020/10/10/70b70cfc-0aff-11eb-859b-f9c27abe638d_story.html

  20. BK @ #1363 Sunday, October 11th, 2020 – 8:57 am

    Confessions
    And it looks like a very recent dressing!

    Also unnecessarily large and on his right hand. It may be up to 3 days old, but they’re having trouble finding usable veins for remdesivir at the White House. I suspect that’s why he’s “finished all treatment”- that and the need to get him off Dex before he nukes Fauci. I doubt that Covita will succumb to SARS-CoV-2, but I do think he will to Biden (and Penceflys).

  25. I just managed to sign the Rudd Petition.
    The site says there are now 37579 signatures on this petition. In one day!

    They are aware of the issue and working to fix it.
    When I first tried yesterday there were only about 4000 signatures so definitely some people are getting lucky with with it.

  28. Rick Morton
    @SquigglyRick
    ·
    1m
    This is darkly comic. FoI docs from Dept of Health participation in WHO public health crisis planning and simulations last year. “Australia always enjoys the variety in each scenario each year, we look forward to a different scenario in 2020.”

  29. rhwombat @ #320 Sunday, October 11th, 2020 – 9:08 am

    BK @ #1363 Sunday, October 11th, 2020 – 8:57 am

    Confessions
    And it looks like a very recent dressing!

    Also unnecessarily large and on his right hand. It may be up to 3 days old, but they’re having trouble finding usable veins for the remdesivir at the White House. I suspect that’s why he’s “finished all treatment” and got him off the Dex before he nukes Fauci. I doubt that Covita will succumb to SARS-CoV-2, but I do think he will to Biden (and Penceflys).

    Covering a wittle bruise maybe? And on the back of his right hand – the last place you go; is that all there is left on pudgy?

  33. I signed Rudd’s petition this morning. I tried at least five times last night without success.
    Why are those people at Trump’s rally all wearing blue t-shirts? Red is the GOP’s colours.

  36. I managed to get on the petition site this morning and sign with no problem (being 5:45AM probably had a lot to do with it) At that time the signatures were up to around 28000. Just checked, now at 37796. I truly hope it doesn’t but I reckon this effort will end up in the same place nearly all these things do, deleted and forgotten.
    Why do I think that? Can anybody recall one of these online petitions actually leading to a anything?

  37. Huntsman bites certainly hurt too.

    Not as bad a a bee sting, in my experience, but a shit-tonne more exciting when big hairy lands on you!

  39. Four years after being elected, campaigning again with the same slogan, “make America great again” would appear to me to be an admission of failure.

  40. From Michael Pascoe, ” . . . if JC turned up to lead Labor, Murdoch media would say you can’t trust a bloke with holes in his hands”.

  42. The first consideration in making a big business investment revolves around confidence in the market assumptions.
    In the case of this budget strategy it believes companies will just go ahead without these considerations. The poll Insiders showed this morning showed that a very substantial proportion of the tax cuts will be saved by their recipients.
    Where is the demand coming from if Jobkeeper and Jobseeker are going to be cut?

  45. ..’…and free University fees for all, just like it was when Keating and Howard went to University…..’
    Comment over at SMH Lambie story…

    Wrong on at least two glaringly obvious levels, to most of us here I hope.

    I stand by my comments about history lessons from yesterday.

  50. Senior Labor sources said the opposition was unlikely to back Mr Rudd’s call for a royal commission.
    ________________
    If people want to waste thier time trying to sign a petition that will not acheive anytthing that’s up to them.

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