Kelly’s zeroes

Mutterings about the security of Craig Kelly’s tenure, a federal LNP vacancy in regional Queensland, and some minor state poll findings from Western Australia.

News remains thin on the ground over the summer holiday period, although we may possibly hopefully see the polling cycle crank up again as of next week. Two pieces of federal preselection news to relate:

• A report in The Australian today raises further doubts about the security of Craig Kelly’s preselection in Hughes – not for the reasons you would hope, but because he has failed to raise any campaign funding for head office since July 2019, according to leaked party documents. He is not alone in this distinction, however, with Farrer MP Sussan Ley, Robertson MP Lucy Wicks and Lindsay MP Melissa McIntosh likewise having come up empty. Kelly was saved from preselection challenges by prime ministerial intervention before both the 2016 and 2019 elections, and a Liberal source cited in The Australian says “there’s no appetite in the party to save him a third time”.

• Ken O’Dowd, who has held the central Queensland seat of Flynn for the Nationals since 2010, announced on January 5 that he will retire at the next election. Queensland Country Life reports that Colin Boyce, who holds the partly corresponding seat of Callide in the state parliament, will contest the preselection. The report quotes Boyce complaining about the failure of David Crisafulli, who replaced Deb Frecklington as Liberal National Party leader after the October state election, to have promoted him to the front bench. It also suggests he may face competition in Flynn from Gladstone councillor Glenn Churchill, who was the party’s unsuccessful candidate for the seat in 2007 and challenged O’Dowd for preselection ahead of the 2019 election.

With the Western Australian election now two months away, two bits of data have emerged from a Painted Dog Research poll conducted for The West Australian in mid-December, which as always do not encompass voting intention:

• Three weeks after Zak Kirkup replaced Liza Harvey as Liberal leader in late November, the poll found him with a 19% approval and 14% disapproval rating. While this compares favourably with Harvey’s 10% and 37% from September, but is obviously remarkably mostly for the 67% uncommitted rating. The poll also found 36% saying Kirkup would be a better leader than Harvey and 11% saying otherwise, with 53% uncommitted.

• With Ben Wyatt to bow out at the election, the poll found 21% favouring Health Minister Roger Cook to succeed him as Treasurer, with Rita Saffioti on 9%, Bill Johnston on 8%, “someone else” on 13% and 49% uncommitted.

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.

1,340 comments on “Kelly’s zeroes”

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  1. Greensborough Growler @ #1244 Tuesday, January 19th, 2021 – 6:15 pm

    C@tmomma @ #1236 Tuesday, January 19th, 2021 – 5:50 pm

    Bert @ #405 Tuesday, January 19th, 2021 – 5:47 pm

    Down here in Tassie we’re always left off the map. With all the shit flying backwards and forwards between various states, for once this is a bloody good thing. You poxed big islanders do us Taswegieans a favour and argue your little hearts out and stay away.

    Well, I’m getting sick of hearing about MONA and its latest exhibition. So there! 😀

    MONA’s a good name for the Taswegians on PB.

    Sick of going in and out of lock down and border restrictions yet? That is unless you live in the NT, WA, SA or little ol’ Tassie. Be careful of that little green monster on your shoulder GG.

  2. @KafkaVoltaire
    ·
    9m
    Replying to @LennaLeprena

    I live in Qld and except for a few they will fall for it
    It was this state that got him over the line
    The roll call: Hanson, Littleproud, Katter, Newman, Christensen, Roberts, Anning, Dutton, et al
    It is literally the Alabama of Australia

  3. Bert @ #1251 Tuesday, January 19th, 2021 – 6:24 pm

    Greensborough Growler @ #1244 Tuesday, January 19th, 2021 – 6:15 pm

    C@tmomma @ #1236 Tuesday, January 19th, 2021 – 5:50 pm

    Bert @ #405 Tuesday, January 19th, 2021 – 5:47 pm

    Down here in Tassie we’re always left off the map. With all the shit flying backwards and forwards between various states, for once this is a bloody good thing. You poxed big islanders do us Taswegieans a favour and argue your little hearts out and stay away.

    Well, I’m getting sick of hearing about MONA and its latest exhibition. So there! 😀

    MONA’s a good name for the Taswegians on PB.

    Sick of going in and out of lock down and border restrictions yet? That is unless you live in the NT, WA, SA or little ol’ Tassie. Be careful of that little green monster on your shoulder GG.

    Whingeing, Whingeing, Whingeing
    Keep that dogma moving.
    Tas Hide!

  5. Batting cost the series. The decision to over-commit to short deliveries today cost the match.

    Also, India should be proud. They managed to triumph despite a depleted bowling line-up. And they’ve demonstrated a solid batting order and that they don’t need Kohli to carry them.

  6. Player One @ #1237 Tuesday, January 19th, 2021 – 5:52 pm

    The Silver Bodgie @ #1126 Tuesday, January 19th, 2021 – 12:38 pm

    Latest Essential poll

    https://essentialvision.com.au/category/essentialreport?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Essential%20Report%20-%2019%20January&utm_content=Essential%20Report%20-%2019%20January+CID_13491410adaf88c506d09f423f53a80c&utm_source=campaign%20monitor&utm_term=View%20the%20Essential%20Report

    This is disturbing. Although more people than ever believe the bushfires were caused by global warming, and the number of people who think global warming is caused by human activity is still around 60% (although off its high), and global warming is still in the top 5 in the list of highest priority issues, the disturbing bit is that 35% of Australians think we are “doing enough” – a record high.

    We aren’t “doing enough” of course. And this issue will come back and bite us – with a vengeance.

    I guess it is possible that concern for Covid is simply overwhelming concern for anything else at present. But we have an election coming soon, and Labor is apparently”running dead” on this issue – which can only advantage the COALition.

    It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

    Nup.
    Mundo has adjusted to the new order.

  9. When you’re Board is really just a glorified subset of the Melbourne club, your coach has no track record whatsoever in long form cricket coaching and you have a couple of assistant coaches one of who played a couple of tests and the other did not, what do you expect.

    #getgillespie with Ponting to assist.

    I wonder when we last failed to win three tests in a row in which we won the toss in Australia.

  10. CNN takes a swipe at Murdoch and Fox News. This also applies to Sky (especially After Dark) and the Murdoch mastheads.

    Four years ago, Fox News headed into the Trump presidency with an unprecedented opportunity. It was not only the primary source of news for the Republican Party, but also the primary source for President Trump himself. The network could have used the opportunity to act responsibly. It could have leveraged its contacts within Trump’s inner circle and the GOP to double down on reporting and break some real news. It could have — at the very least — delivered the cold hard truth to the millions who relied on it for accurate, reliable information.

    But it did none of those things. Instead, Fox chose to run in the opposite direction. The propagandists on the network were empowered like never before while the so-called “straight news” hours became Trumpier and Trumpier. Its hosts scored dozens of Trump interviews, but, in most cases, instead of pressing him with tough questions, they egged on his worst tendencies. Even when not talking directly with him, the hosts were speaking directly to him. And they egged on those poor tendencies by feeding him a steady diet of hyper-partisan stories and outright disinformation. While it is officially called the “Trump presidency,” there is a good case to be made that it should be referred to as the “Fox News presidency.”

    Now, that is all coming to an end. But it is important to realize that none of that had to happen. Rupert Murdoch, who has already earned more money than he can possibly know what to do with, could have put an end to it with a snap of a finger. He could have done this when his hosts lied about the Russia investigation and pushed “deep-state” nonsense. He could have done it when his hosts misled the American public about the coronavirus. He could have done it when the network’s top personalities entertained wild conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. He did not.

    https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/18/media/donald-trump-fox-news-reliable-sources/index.html

  13. Great stuff from India. They beat Australia (at the Gabba!!) to win the series with much of their team injured or unavailable. No time for Australia to whinge.

  15. Andy Maher@AndyMaherDFA · 10m
    Kohli
    Bumrah
    Ashwin
    Jadeja
    Vihari
    Shami
    All out.
    That was half an Indian 2nd XI at a ground Australia doesn’t lose test matches.
    Staggering. #AUSvsIND

  16. Taylormade @ #1258 Tuesday, January 19th, 2021 – 6:41 pm

    GG
    So much for your comment last night on 327 being more than enough.

    If the Australians had declared say 300 in front last night, they may have picked up a couple of wickets before play was washed out.

    Delaying the end of the innings didn’t help Australia in the end.

    Conservative management of the match tactics hurt Australia today.

    I congratulate the Indians who were far too good.

  19. Regardless of the outcome, we can’t deny that was a thrilling final hour of the match. In the end, I will always take an exciting outcome like that over a one-sided match or a slow crawl to a draw.

  22. Dizzy should have had the job in the first place of course, but I think there’s plenty of blame to be shared around. Like the batting, the bowling, the keeping…..

    Fantastic effort from India. One for the ages.

    Oh, and if they do make Paine the scapegoat, let’s hope they don’t go with GG as captain!

  30. N

    I took an instant dislike to that opinion piece where he writes “It was also based on a number of false assumptions. Firstly, that achieving herd immunity – obtaining enough immunity in the population so that Covid transmission cannot take hold – is the only worthwhile goal of vaccinating the Australian population”

    A bunch of straw men caught fire just now..

    Not the first time I’ve seen a qualified epidemiologist write irrational, turgid polemic.

  34. Wittgenstein said in his seminal work that words can’t match
    language. I think he was right. There’s an article in the “New Yorker” attesting to the same. It was a crossword, every word matching this appalling creep.

  35. poroti

    Even if all you’re concerned about is people getting sick then efficacy matters. Plus this fool doesn’t seem to notice that the best protection for the vulnerable is herd immunity – by a long margin.

    What’s going to be interesting here is if we are still doling out the Pfizer vaccine (maybe because it has supply issues) when the AZ vaccine comes out. The “adults in the room” are going to have to decide who gets which and where the cut off point is going to be. And defend that decision.

    And what if they decide that over 55s get the Pfizer vaccine and everyone else gets the AZ vaccine and then the Pfizer vaccine has supply issues. Do they then turn around and give some older people the AZ vaccine? Or do they make them wait?

    Of course, we’re assuming that the AZ vaccine might be available in May/June. But it only went back and restarted its Phase 3 trials in December. And we don’t know the results. And our regulator might require more data.

  38. Cud Chewer
    Last month Pfizer said ‘supply issues’ were hampering their meeting production targets. So supply v demand may not be good.
    There are a couple of other vaccines soon to be ready to roll so that may speed things up soon. For instance he Janssen vax stage 3 trials finishes in a week or so and looks good. Bonus , only one shot needed

  39. This reminds me of back in March when the first signage and ads showed up.

    Ads that lumped covid and the flu into the same sentence.

    Long since gone.

  40. I dips me lid to the Indians.
    They showed courage in the face of extreme physical risk. They showed the mental application required at test level. They refused to put up with racism. Combined, they were more skilled than the Australians.
    But the thing I appreciated most was the joie de vivre that shone through at times.
    They enjoyed their cricket.
    And so did I.

  43. poroti

    Pfizer apparently rethought its production process, so there is a delay but it will mean they can produce more soon.

    We’ve also apparently done a big deal with Novavax. Its a shame their trials took a while to get off the ground because I believe that their molecular vaccine could be good. What we didn’t do is do a deal with Moderna, when we should have.

    You mean Johnson and Johnson? (still amuses me because the name always makes me think baby powder). Unknown efficacy and its another adenovirus based vaccine. Also it says that in November they went back and launched a new Phase 3 to find the efficacy of 2 doses. This may hint that they weren’t that fussed about early data.

  45. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-19/nsw-coronavirus-clusters-three-weeks-to-end-analysis-shows/13066306

    Interesting. I’ve observed this myself. Problem is that its not the lifetime of an individual cluster that matters its whether we have hidden carriers that go off and spawn another cluster.. and another..

    I for one want to see an end to the outbreaks in Sydney, but the number of unlinked cases means we need a lot of luck. I’m also hoping that the introduction of mask wearing has a real effect.

  46. boerwar:

    [‘Tuesday, January 19, 2021 at 8:36 pm’]

    And from time to time, you’re interesting too; though verbosity should not be encouraged.

  47. So some numbers…

    According to Worldometer, if the current trend of 200k cases per day holds in the USA, the total number of cases will exceed the entire population of Australia in about 4 days.

    It means 7.5% of the total USA has been diagnosed with COVID-19 (of course excluding those who cannot afford to be tested and those who refuse to be tested in the belief the whole to do is some Illuminati hoax).

    By comparison, Australia’s 29k cases represent 0.1% of our population.

    This represents a staggering failure of government at all levels to contain this virus. A shocking abrogation of responsibility.

    And while we can argue here (correctly) that Scotty showed appallingly poor leadership during this crisis. At least he didn’t actively fuck it up.

  48. 3z

    When you factor in all the reasons why the US is under-reporting cases, the real number could be 3-4x the official figure. So 20-25 percent of the population. At this rate the US is well on its way to old-fashioned herd immunity.

  49. 3Z

    And while we can argue here (correctly) that Scotty showed appallingly poor leadership during this crisis. At least he didn’t actively fuck it up.

    Praise be to the Flying Spaghetti Monster that we have a Federation.

  50. Re the Virus in the USA:
    – about 1/14 Americans have been known to have been infected. So everybody knows a Covid victim, every extended family has been affected.
    – about 1/800 Americans are known to have died of the Virus. That’s about 10 times worse than their road toll, 25 times worse than ours.

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