Today is the day of the federal by-election for the Queensland seat of Groom, which you can offer your thoughts on on this post in the apparently unlikely event that you have something specifically to say about it through the course of the day. This site will naturally be all over the count this evening, complete with a live results facility that is fully battle-tested so far as federal elections are concerned.
Other news of note:
• Roy Morgan had a result this week from the federal voting intention series it conducts regularly but publishes erratically. This one credited the Coalition with a slender two-party lead of 50.5-49.5, from primary votes of Coalition 42%, Labor 34%, Greens 12% and One Nation 4%. State breakdowns had the Coalition leading 53.5-46.5 in New South Wales, the reverse in Victoria, the Coalition leading 54.5-45.5 in Queensland, the Coalition leading 51-49 in Western Australia, and Labor leading 52.5-47.5 in South Australia. The poll was conducted online and by telephone over the two previous weekends from a sample of 2824.
• The Financial Review reports on JWS Research polling that shows 20% believe states should close borders to other states that have any active COVID-19 cases, “almost 60%” believe the same should happen if there are 25 active cases, and 75% say the same for 100 active cases. The report further relates that 60% of respondents rated the federal government’s handling of the virus positively, down six points from July, and that 87% of Western Australians, 82% of South Australians and 57% of Victorians (up seven since July) did likewise for their state goverments, with due caution for the small size of the relevant sub-samples. The poll was conducted from a sample of 1035 from last Friday to Sunday.
• John Ferguson of The Australian reports on Victorial Liberal Senate preselection contenders for the next election: Simon Frost, staffer to Josh Frydenberg and the party’s former state director (including at the time of its disastrous 2018 campaign); Roshena Campbell, a Melbourne lawyer; Greg Mirabella, Wangaratta farmer and husband of Sophie Mirabella; and Jess Wilson, policy director at the Business Council of Australia. This is likely to amount to a race for the second position on the ticket, with Sarah Henderson to be promoted to first and Scott Ryan not seeking another term. There is contention in the state branch over president Robert Clark’s reluctance to have preselections determined through party plebiscites, with critics accusing him of using COVID-19 to maintain control by the central administration, as it did before the last election. According to the report, “a statewide ballot would favour Mr Frost, while an administrative committee vote would favour those loyal to Mr Clark’s forces“.
That is a fair observation. But I do miss the days of old, with a bit of biff between chair and couch. These days I perceive everyone singing from the same hymn sheet, albeit in different registers.
I stopped watching Insiders after to 2019 election and never came back. Judging by the commentary here, I’m not missing much. It seems to have gone downhill since Barrie Cassidy left.
Vic,
Obviously written by Taylormade!
First time I’ve watched it for a while Steve777, will be a while before I come back.
Not a fan of lefty FitzSimons articles, but at least he makes mention of the dreadful stuff-ups in the state’s hotel quarantine system.
Whilst many so called journalists such as Albereci like to pretend it just didn’t happen.
GG
Yeah of course it was. Lol!
Speers flat out misrepresented what the winemaker Ross Hill said when he asked Birmingham where he (Hill) had a point that maybe Australia had been going too hard on China.
That was not the point. The point was to ask why Australia is sticking its head up alone and acting unilaterally. The question is spot on. Morrison was channeling Trump with anti China rhetoric- THAT was the spark that blew this all up. Kevin Rudd explained both the stupidity and the ineffectiveness of such a unilateral approach for a middle ranking country – especially one with deep trade ties to a superpower like China – in such actions. Check out his vlog on this back in March on utube.
Of course Scotty from Marketing’s latest brain fart was just the last misstep by the current iteration of LNP politicians, going back to when they were in opposition back in 2008. They have lurched from craven obsequiousness between 2009 (when Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison criticised then Prime Minister Rudd for publishing an article sounding a note of caution and balance in our relationship with China – rightly pointing out that there had been no progress towards democratisation and that we were an integral member of the western alliance) and 2015 when Hockey approved the sale of the Port of Darwin (brokered by the Chinese agent of influence and then trade minister, Andrew Robb) and signed offer by Scotty when he assumed treasury, and going totally John Bull from 2017 onwards (the campaign to wedge Labor on ‘agents of influence’, 5G network and then increasingly tooting the Trump bugle horn later on). That’s what pisses the Chinese off – the inconsistency, hypocrisy and the arrogance behind a colonial offshoot like Australia thinking that we can dictate anything to them.
I’ll end this post by linking once again to Stephen Fitzgerald’s excellent lecture “Managing Ourselves in a Chinese World”. In my view his views, and those of old China hands like him and also Rudd offer Australia the most plausible pathway forward … once we ditch the current pirates in government.
https://www.whitlam.org/publications/2017/10/4/managing-ourselves-in-a-chinese-world-australian-foreign-policy-in-an-age-of-disruption
Q: The dreadful stuff-ups in the state’s hotel quarantine system….do you mean SA? They seemed to learn nothing from Victoria…
Very interesting swing to Labor in Groom yesterday.
Any ideas as to why ..?
I have Insiders on my computer running in the background. I, too, multitask while I am watching it. If something interesting seems to catch my attention I listen more closely. Today it was the first thing James Campbell said about Kylie Moore-Gilbert, with which I agreed wholeheartedly. Then it was interesting to watch Katherine Murphy whir into action to defend the Morrison government’s actions. More telling than anything done or said for the rest of the program.
“ Very interesting swing to Labor in Groom yesterday.
Any ideas as to why ..?”
Ummm. Just a stab in the dark, but I surmise that the swing was on account of it being a a bye election in a government held ‘safe seat’ when the opposition actually ran a candidate. The swing seems typical of such circumstances.
I’ve been listening to pods I haven’t had time to catch during the week. Like this one:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6KgpKjqhMto18Ttu28nZur
Morrison will not capitulate to the Chinese demands in their ’14 Point’ screed. I imagine he sees it like Kevin Rudd’s walking away from action wrt Climate Change. Morrison has stuck his pole in the ground re China and if he kowtows now he will go the way of Rudd with the public. As Gareth Parker noted, there is a dichotomy between what the elites, such as Rudd, Keating, Carr and whoever else, believe should be the course of action and what Joe Public thinks the government should be doing to China.
I’m using the Gladys Liu barometer to gauge the temperature of the Morrison government. She hasn’t been seen for most of the year and if Morrison can figure out a way to keep parliament ‘Covid Safe’, ie protected from the inconvenient presence of MPs like Liu, then that is what he will do. She will only return, I predict, when the temperature in the general community goes down wrt China.
Taylormade seems to have a very narrow focus. Perhaps that’s necessary if one wants to support Morrison.
lizzie @ #414 Sunday, November 29th, 2020 – 10:15 am
And the deadbeat Victorian Liberal Opposition.
Andrew_Earlwood @ #410 Sunday, November 29th, 2020 – 10:10 am
So, nothing for Albanese to get too excited about …?
lizzie,
Obsession is the word!
“ As Gareth Parker noted, there is a dichotomy between what the elites, such as Rudd, Keating, Carr and whoever else, believe should be the course of action and what Joe Public thinks the government should be doing to China.”
That dichotomy- to the extent it actually exists – is an astroturfed construct of Scotty from marketing and various buglehorns on his backbench and in 9Faix. This rifts off Trumpian notes from America and a gut reaction from Scotty that there is short term domestic political capital to be had. It now probably forms part of the ‘cultcha wars’, but I wonder how deep such sentiment really runs. I suspect that a lot of ‘Joe Public’ implicitly understand the importance of the relationship to our future economic prosperity because they understand just how important that relationship has been for us over the past 20 years.
Leaving ‘perceptions’ aside, the stances – wildly inconsistent as they may be – by the current cadre of LNP federal politicians has been the most irresponsible and damaging interventions in our foreign policy since, like forever. We are simply not setting ourselves up very wisely for the remaining decades in the 21st century. Of course, those fuck ups parrallel the LNP’s fuck ups on climate change. And so it goes.
Quite incredible how undemocratic these right-wing extremists are.
Maybe we should get all those stranded overseas home by boat.
That dichotomy- to the extent it actually exists – is an astroturfed construct of Scotty from marketing and various buglehorns on his backbench and in 9Faix.
Not purely and simply/simplistically. People have eyes to see what China has been up to wrt Hong Kong, the Uighers, the South China Sea, Agents of Influence, Samoa, PNG etc. They aren’t as stupid as you would characterise them, A_E.
Now tell me, would YOU agree to China’s ’14 Point Plan’ for Australia, if you were the one making the decisions.
Also I never expected you to be quite the capitalist that you are being shown to be. Capital Uber Human Rights. The only principle is how it relates to money.
Greensborough Growler @ #422 Sunday, November 29th, 2020 – 10:29 am
But! But! Scotty stopped them! 😆
Seems like a bit of buyer remorse coming to the fore with this dude.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/28/trump-donor-election-fraud-sues-money-back
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/28/trump-donor-election-fraud-sues-money-back
Ya gotta laff.
Snap
We’re having trouble with China because of Morrison’s insults. He should not have tried to ingratiate himself with Trump at the expense of China. He’s an idiot. Australia-China relations have suffered because of his stupidity. China has made it clear they are going to take advantage of this. At the end of the day, Australia will lose. It’s probably well beyond the Liberals to fix this, which means it won’t be fixed at all.
More a case of a fool and his money, in my view.
Birmingham can talk a gate off its hinges. Now that Christian’s done his dash, Simon’s showing Scott that he’s future prime ministerial material by fulsomely defending his ill-considered decision to publicly finance Cormann’s jaunt. In days of yore, this would’ve been considered a scandal; now it’s the norm, with the added concern that essentially, the MSM and the Opposition have condoned this hogwash.
Groom improves further for Labor according to Kevin Bonham.
Sunday: Around 5000 postals were added sometime last night and these split only 68-32 to the LNP, compared with 77-23 in 2019. As a result the swing to Labor has come up to 4%, which is squarely in the “nothing to see here” range. It will probably change little on further counting.
Birmingham is a Senator and has no prospect of becoming PM.
Mavis, can you point me to a quote where an opposition official has condoned the spending of taxpayers money in finding Cormann a job, essentially or otherwise?
The Groom result affirms the view that the status quo is intact in Australia. Nothing has changed.
Day 29 of no Covid-19 cases in Victoria.
Now that Premier Andrews has ruled out stepping down or moving to Canberra, I think he’s in for a marathon innings lasting as long as his passion for delivery remains.
This is a crushing defeat for the right wing conservatives in this state.
Admittedly, left wing conservatives are harder to find.
Non @ #427 Sunday, November 29th, 2020 – 10:54 am
I think we can expect the empty suit to preserve his voter base by grovelling to Xi to restore our export arrangements to China.
Victoria hits big COVID-19 milestone
Victoria has recorded no new cases of COVID-19 for the 30th straight day ahead of the easing of border restrictions.
Zero cases were reported from 5905 tests on Sunday, the Department of Health and Human Services said.
Victoria still has no active cases of the virus after the last coronavirus patient was discharged last week, with the state having fully recovered from its deadly second wave.
The milestone will be welcome news to travellers and people with family members in Victoria.
When Victorian Liberals like
Josh Frydenberg
Micheal whoever
Kew-anon
bet there was political mileage in campaigning against the state government Covid policies
they made politics visceral – unsure about scale of electoral destruction
Non,
The only discernible general trend I have observed is that those opposed to the various Governments’ Pandemic responses have been punished. Primarily O’Brien and the Libs in Victoria, Frecklington in Qld and Harvey in WA.
Labor have run a strong border closure agenda which the public seem to support. Labor have kept in the game by not being over-critical or hysterically oppositionist during tough times. Tells me that the public are not particularly interested in partisan politicking atm.
4 cases in NSW all in hotel quarantine
22 days without a community case
With regard to the returnees. My stepson, who is the concierge in one of the hotels, gets the impression that many of them have not spent a large part of their life in Australia.
And what are we to conclude from this, Oakeshott?
Rex
Do you still think Dan Andrews should call a leadership spill, just for the heck of it?
No conclusion except many may have permanent residence/ dual citizenship status that allows one to live in multiple countries ( wish I had it) and are now making a sensible decision to come to the country where the pandemic is under control
zoomster @ #443 Sunday, November 29th, 2020 – 11:17 am
Yes why not, just to rub everyones nose in it for fun.
Oakeshott Country @ #444 Sunday, November 29th, 2020 – 11:17 am
That’s good for our economy.
The rather unappealing Murdoch journo on Insiders made a good point this morning in relation to Chris Bowen’s recent Jack Ferguson Memorial Lecture
(of which a transcript can be found here https://www.chrisbowen.net/transcriptsspeeches/what-would-jack-think-australia-and-the-suburbs-in-2020-the-jack-ferguson-memorial-lecture/).
On Election Night 2019, one would have been forgiven for thinking that Bowen’s aspirations to become leader of the party one of these days had been deep sixed. But a quiet and persistent rehabilitation process has been underway since that time.
Sam Maiden was a substantial contributor to the process in her confusingly written but nevertheless interesting post-morten of Labor’s electoral major fail, Party Animals. Maiden paints a picture of Bowen as largely being a helpless victim of a poor shadow cabinet process, in which the election platform quickly came to be dominated with a whole lot of policies put forward by Plibersek and other left factional types which were extremely expensive, but not likely to win a lot of votes. According to Maiden, poor old Bowen was hemmed in to a corner in which he was forced to retain electorally poisonous proposals such as the removal of imputation credits and further restrictions to the tax free status of superannuation in order to pay for these (electorally) dud spending promises.
(Maiden’s thesis doesn’t explain why Bowen decided to make his cringeworthy suggestion to an unhappy voter that, if they didn’t like Labor’s policies, they should vote Liberal, but never mind about that.)
Bowen must now feel that enough time has passed to enable him to put his head above the parapet once more. His speech was pretty well done IMO. Bowen basically finessed the issue of the poisonous tax and retirement income policies he took to the last election: he referred to suburban voters as having “aspirations”, but then talked about a range of aspirations they might have other than that of accumulating wealth (which was the brick wall into which Labor crashed head-on in 2019). He focused on issues such as creating more jobs in manufacturing, the terrible workplace conditions provided by the so-called “gig economy” and the need for more social and transport infrastructure: all issues on which the right and left wings of the ALP are able to find common cause.
The sort of speech that an aspiring party leader might wish to make.
Just saying.
Non:
Sunday, November 29, 2020 at 10:57 am
[‘Birmingham is a Senator and has no prospect of becoming PM.’]
Tell that to John Gorton, a senator having three months to find a HOR’s seat.
_________________________________________
Fulvio Sammut:
Sunday, November 29, 2020 at 10:58 am
[‘Mavis, can you point me to a quote where an opposition official has condoned the spending of taxpayers money in finding Cormann a job, essentially or otherwise?’]
No, but Labor supports Cormann’s job application, and as far as I can ascertain, has not specfically condemned the excessive cost involved thereto, Labor’s pitch going to this:
[‘The federal opposition accused Mr Morrison of “double standards” on Wednesday when he defended the use of the private jet, equating the situation to the 36,000 Australians stranded overseas as a result of border closures.’]
And this:
[‘While Labor supports Mr Cormann’s bid, foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong said she was confused by Mr Morrison’s justification for approving the use of a RAAF jet.’]
I can’t find any reference by Labor to the obscene waste of public monies to fund Cormann’s travel costs. Perhaps you can?
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/scott-morrison-defends-taxpayer-funded-private-jet-for-mathias-cormann-s-oecd-bid-20201125-p56hyx.html
Non @ #434 Sunday, November 29th, 2020 – 10:58 am
Nong,
What do you mean by ‘the status quo is intact’ …?
Not true blue Aussies then Oakeshott.