The news from Hughes (and Boothby and Dickson)

Craig Kelly quits the Liberals, Nicolle Flint to quit politics, and unsuccessful Labor candidate Ali France lines up for another crack at Peter Dutton.

The week’s federal election preselection developments:

• Facing the apparent certainty of preselection defeat, Craig Kelly announced his resignation from the Liberal Party at a party room meeting Wednesday. Kelly says he will sit as an “independent Liberal” and then run in his Sydney seat of Hughes again at the election, which I believe leaves open the possibility that that may be as the candidate of another party. He appeared to rule out running for the Nationals, as some in the party hoped he might, saying he was “not sure whether a pair of RM Williams and a big Akubra and a Driza-Bone will necessarily work in Sutherland”.

• It had generally been assumed the Liberal preselection in Hughes would prove third time lucky for Kent Johns, Sutherland Shire councillor and factional moderate, from whom Kelly had to be saved by prime ministerial intervention before the 2016 and 2019 elections. However, The Australian reported on Tuesday that moderates were cooking up a deal with conservatives in which Hughes would go to Dallas McInerney, chief executive of Catholic Schools NSW, in exchange for a free hand in the preselections for Warringah and Gilmore. Reports that the Hughes preselection might be contested by police commissioner Mick Fuller were dismissed as a “furphy” by a source quoted in the St George Shire Standard. Those who may run were said in the report to include Carmelo Pesce, a cafe owner and former Sutherland Shire mayor; Ned Mannoun, a former Liverpool mayor; Bree Till, a veterans service adviser whose husband was killed on service in Afghanistan in 2009; and Naji Najjar, a former Bankstown councillor and staffer to Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells.

• Nicolle Flint, two-term Liberal member for the marginal Adelaide seat of Boothby, announced on Friday she would not contest the next election. Flint said she had soured on politics after personal attacks against her during the 2019 election campaign, which the Liberals have cited in support of proposed electoral law changes that would clip the wings of the GetUp! organisation, and the recent rape allegation by former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins.

• Labor has announced that Ali France, a motivational speaker and former television producer who lost a leg in a car accident in 2011, will again be the party’s candidate in Peter Dutton’s northern Brisbane seat of Dickson. Dutton won the seat by 4.6% in 2019 after a favourable swing of 2.9%, a fairly typical result for Brisbane.

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.

1,965 comments on “The news from Hughes (and Boothby and Dickson)”

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  1. Unless there’s a police charge, there’s no need for Morrison to take action. Pollies are accused of things all the time.

    Panel agree.

  3. I like to think it was what Gillard suffered that has raised the consciousness of the media to how women in politics are treated.

  12. Yep, Insiders is full of Murdoch slime today. “The Hard Left” being caricatured as a bunch of lawless violent thugs. Has Rosie Lewis seen what the Hard Right gets up to!?!

  17. Point of order;

    I didn’t exacerbate her pre-exisitng condition. Her admission was precautionary, so that it wouldn’t.

    (cracked record, cracked record)

  19. Laurie Ferguson
    @LDTFerguson

    ABC News lamented that the Golden Globe Awards had too many categories. After Phil Coorey’s manufactured , contrived grimace about his supposed forgetting of the year the alleged latest rape report occurred, I feel we might not have enough.

  20. Holy shit this is vacuous drivel. Reynolds can’t be defence minister because she won’t front the NPC? Is that woman for real?!

    Talk about insider bullshit.

  25. “Murdoch shill now throwing shade on Linda Reynolds future

    The fix is in, for the fallgirl..”

    Yep, the bus is being revved…

  27. Even Fox News took allegations of historic sexual assault more seriously than the ABC is taking historic rape allegations.

    It is ‘their’ ABC now.

  29. Victim blaming and excuse making is getting a good run on Insiders this morning.

    Brittany shouldn’t have gone to the media… Peter Dutton is understandably “passionate” about dealing with sex crimes by the book… Morrison is damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t… Linda Reynolds had a political shiv slipped between her ribs: no ticker, you see… Did Penny Wong report the new rape case to Albo? (WTF did a 33 year-old allegation, about an event that involved a perpetrator from the other party, before he was even in Parliament, have to do with Albo?)… yada-yada-yada…

    Speers now trying to blame Albo for all this, FFS.

  30. I haven’t watched Insiders on any regular basis for yonks now, having been immersed in US politics. I’ve been watching some of the US political talk shows and they (the mainstream ones anyways) are streets ahead of what Insiders has become.

  32. Why didn’t Shorten stand down when under investigation by Police for an allegation of rape decades ago?
    How is his case any different to the current Minister?

  33. Phillip Coorey: Penny Wong – Linda Reynolds: same – same.

    Except Reynolds was an employer, and the rape happened on her couch. A minister, responsible to GG in Council and the PM.

    Yeah, right. Same – Same. Not.

  36. “ Why didn’t Shorten stand down when under investigation by Police for an allegation of rape decades ago?
    How is his case any different to the current Minister?”

    I think the phrase “current Minister” answers your question.

    By contrast, Shorten was the opposition leader at the time.

  37. Peter van Onselen@vanOnselenP
    ·
    7m
    It’s false equivalence to compare Linda Reynolds not passing on her knowledge of an alleged sexual assault OF A GOVERNMENT STAFFER to the PM while he was PM with Penny Wong not passing on an alleged historical sexual assault from 1988 by a political opponent to the Labor leader.

  43. Andrew_Earlwood says:
    Sunday, February 28, 2021 at 9:31 am

    Why shouldn’t Shorten have stood down as Opposition Leader – that’s a fairly important position in our Parliamentary system? He was potentially the next PM.

  46. “Yeah, AM, it was just as interesting two weeks ago, when we read it and discussed it here.”

    That would have been enlightening. Must have been before I stumbled upon this blog.

    The growing divide in the Labor Party is fascinating, as is the emergence of these so called “fractions” within the larger factions.

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