Detailed below are some recent electoral developments, the juiciest of which relate to factional power struggles within Victorian Labor, whose federal preselection process has been taken over by the party’s national executive in the wake of the Adem Somyurek branch-stacking affair. Note also the post below offering a half-time report on the Tasmanian state election campaign.
• Josh Bornstein, employment lawyer and partner at Maurice Blackburn, has pulled out of a challenge against Kim Carr for the safe position on Labor’s Victorian Senate ticket that is reserved to the Left. This followed a report in The Australian that trawled through a decade’s worth of his voluminous social media activity, turning up criticism of party and union figures including Chris Bowen and Penny Wong. The Age reports Left faction unions were divided between Carr and Bornstein, with one or more further challengers likely to emerge. One such is Ryan Batchelor, executive director of the McKell Institute and son of former state MP Peter Batchelor.
• The Age report also says that Sam Rae, a partner at PwC and former state party secretary, is “being encouraged” to run in the new seat of Hawke on Melbourne’s north-western fringe. An earlier report indicated that a stability pact being negotiated between the main factions would reserve the seat for the Right, potentially setting up a turf war between the Victorian Right forces associated with Richard Marles and Bill Shorten, who are emerging as the main rivals for influence within the faction.
• Andrew Laming’s bid to retain preselection in Bowman has predictably fallen foul of the Liberal National Party’s candidate suitability panel.
• I’ll have a dedicated post up shortly for the May 22 by-election in the New South Wales state seat of Upper Hunter, my guide for which can be found here. Results of a uComms poll for the Australia Institute are encouraging for the Nationals, who hold seat seat on a margin of 2.6%. When added together properly, the poll credits the Nationals with a primary vote of 38.5%, compared with 34.0% at the 2019 election; Labor with 23.8%, compared with 28.6%; One Nation, who did not contest in 2019, with 13.8%; the Greens with 10.1%, more than double their 4.8% vote share in 2019; and bookies favourite Shooters Fishers and Farmers with only 8.2%, compared with 22.0%. The poll was conducted on April 7 and 8 by automated phone polling and SMS from a sample of 686.
• A new site called OzPredict offers cleanly presented poll-based forecasting of the next federal election, with the promise of more features to follow.
guytaur
Tried what ? Turning Africa’s highest GDP nation into a place where slave markets became a thing ? Booming success.
The Chaser’s War on Everything?
“A gold star for the Bludger who identifies our second longest war.”
.
The Culture Wars must have a few contenders like the “War on Xmas” that the heathen lefties and PC armies run each year.
This is the big international Hillsong conference at Olympic Park that was postponed from 2020 due to Covid. According to their website, the conference has been postponed again until 2022. There is big money involved in hiring the venue, paying people like Justin Bieber to attend and so on. Morrison will once again be disappointed – so sad.
https://hillsong.com/conference/sydney/
The conclusion of the discussion (as opposed to the article) was that no matter what leads to a SARS-CoV-2 infection, social distancing helps prevent it. Unless you want to argue about that too?
As to “Dixon St”, you brought it up, not me. I was just wondering how on Earth you could justify your confidence in stating that no-one got infected there?
When did I ever argue that it didn’t.
There were no clusters associated with Dixon St, any infection if any that occurred there was stochastic, so it looks like the Chinese who were avoiding the place were overly cautious.
Our longest war – that would be Afghanistan – 20 years (which varying levels of troop commitment). Vietnam 10 years, WWI and II, 4 ad 7 years.
As war in Afghanistan lasted 20 years I know of none longer.
Oakeshott Country
Perhaps their avoidance of the place ‘saved the day’ given travelers from China apparently liking to dine there and the large % of customers the two groups represent.
Border Wars
(by which I mean white vs indigenous here in downunderland.)
“It could be that lots of things are going on at once.”
Who knew.
A broad overview of Covid, vaccines, and blood clots.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/04/vaccine-related-blood-clot-mystery-must-be-solved/618623/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20210416&silverid=%25%25RECIPIENT_ID%25%25&utm_term=The%20Atlantic%20Daily
Is Australia still technically at war with Nth Korea?
by which I mean white vs indigenous here in downunderland
Sometimes called the”Australian Frontier Wars”, they lasted from 1788 into the 20th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_frontier_wars
Was interested to read this morning that Albo’s original question to Morrison re the watches was targeting the board of Australia post not the CEO. This may explain why Morrison is wearing the blame, he moved the discussion from a question re board competence to blaming the female CEO. As he is a master of not answering questions he should have said he needed more info to answer before going off.
I still think he has created his own problem because he would be an idiot to try to privatise Australia Post anytime soon.
Korea War.
We have a truce.
Our last trip outside Canberra was to Sydney in early March last year and we visited Chinatown as usual but the place was very quiet. This was when overseas students (who make up a lot of customers in Chinatown) had not returned and early warnings of social distancing were being given.
This time we drove and stayed at the Pullman hotel at Olympic Park on a discounted ‘advance purchase’ deal. For anyone interested, Olympic Park is a good place to stay when there are no events scheduled. It’s easy to reach by car and has good rail, bus and ferry connections to the rest of Sydney so you can leave the car at the hotel.
‘Simon Katich says:
Saturday, April 17, 2021 at 12:18 pm
poroti @ #85 Saturday, April 17th, 2021 – 11:45 am
A gold star for the Bludger who identifies our second longest war.
boerwar vs Xi ?
Shhhhhh! Dont mention the second boerwar.
Any chance to post something with the splendid Connie Booth…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfl6Lu3xQW0‘
That would be third Boer War. The Boers won the first Boer War, the Brits the second. Naturally the Brits carry on as if there were only one Boer War. Funny, that.
Poroti
Obama failed in Libya.
Establishing or ending slave markets had nothing to do with it.
That’s part of the mistake of using western values to look at power dynamics. Getting those things ended is the destination. It’s not the journey.
Am I alone in thinking that the various problems that have been highlighted during the pandemic, such as the rollout of the vaccines, give the Labor party an option to talk about the negative impacts on the country that running a small government have caused.
Would the voters be more inclined to support a government that planned to reinvest and reinvigorate the public service. There must be plenty of data to show that the outsourcing of all kinds of reports and reviews to private companies has not actually saved any money. The actual effect has been to increase costs via consultants fees at the same time as the country has been left in a position where it was unable to provide safety for its citizens.
One of the posters on this site has frequently said the federal government couldn’t provide services because they no longer have the staff, is it time to look at why vaccines are being distributed by private firms, why quarantine facilities were divested to the states, why the army had to assist with logistics. Is it time for a discussion about what services should be outsourced and what services the government should provide.
https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2026187
“Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said that America must acknowledge that “white supremacy is weaved into our founding documents and principles.”
I wonder why she said that about greatest democracy on earth.
Ven
Facts. Same British Empire values established Australia.
One good thing is that as America evolves it’s forcing Australian’s to examine our common white supremacy. We too had genocide. The most obvious one being Tasmanian Indigenous people.
Terra Nullius at the core of the constitution is pure white supremacy.
Edit: It’s not our fault it was there. It is our fault we have not torn up the constitution and started again with a Republic.
guytaur
Before “liberation” no slave markets, afterwards, no government,wrecked economy, war lords and slave markets , a coincidence ?
Poroti
Unlike you I am not claiming Obama had an aim of establishing slave markets and was successful in that even by inference.
The headline I pointed you to was failure. You are just pointing out how bad the failure was in reaching western values.
Edit: yes I am assuming slave markets are not a western value.
Assantdj,
There’s one very important point that you have overlooked and I don’t want you to think that I’m trying to make it personal here because your basic thesis is sound. Yes, there is now copious evidence that the neoliberal ideology of small government via the privatisation of what once were public services provided by public servants, is defunct, broken beyond repair and not what it was cracked up to be.
And that point is, that, for every service that is farmed out to the private sector to do what was once done ‘in house’, so to speak, at the end of that is a business that comes into being to do that job and the people that that business employs. So they then become dependent on that businessperson and that businessperson becomes dependent on things not going back to the way they were. And thjey especially like the fact that they can make a juicy profit from what once used to be public services that they paid taxes to maintain.
So it’s a win-win for them. Juicy profits and reduced taxes that the government of ‘small government’ offers them because those services are no longer funded by government. And they vote.
The few glitches that happen along the way with the privatised service delivery are massaged away during the term of government. Such that by the time of the election the party of ‘small government’ can run a scare campaign against the party ‘that wants to raise your taxes’. And they win again and the cycle repeats itself.
I’m not really sure what the end point of all this is but I think the answer can be found in an Ayn Rand book somewhere. 🙂
Assantdjsays:
Saturday, April 17, 2021 at 1:31 pm
The ALP will not talk about the negative impacts of running a small government because it does not have a charismatic leaders like Whitlam to talk about benefits of big government and they are in opposition. Also, as soon as they start talking about that LNP will run a campaign calling ALP a ‘Tax and spend” , ‘debt and deficit’ party although LNP ran the biggest ‘ debt and deficit’government.
Small government is a trick devised by Tories to capture government and do nothing in the government and take no blame if things go wrong.
I am not saying that the government run every sector of public life. They should run essential services like water, electricity, health and education.
C@tmomma @ #123 Saturday, April 17th, 2021 – 1:47 pm
You can add to this that there is probably no requirement to store records as the public service would have to. Allows commercial in confidence to over ride the contract costs and the auditors have little access to records of what was provided in return.
The problem was the Libya was an active exporter of state terrorism.
This terrorism targeted civilians.
I doubt that it is a peculiarly ‘Western’ to have a strong value against the export of state terrorism by way of targeting civilians. Indeed, according to some Islamic theologians it is also against the values of Islam. What Sun Tzu has to say on the matter, I don’t know. Mao clarified things by declaring that ‘power grows out of the barrel of a gun’. Xi knows this, which is why he now feels free to threaten to invade Taiwan, a thriving independent democracy, whose only ongoing crime is to defy Xi and the CPC.
Whether destroying the Libyan state government (Ghaddafy WAS the state) by bombing the crap out of it was the appropriate solution is the question. Rudd was actively for it. I seem to recall arguing against it on the basis that we shouldn’t start any such activity without first also having an exit strategy front and centre.
If Morrison does what a gormless and witless Australian prime minister WOULD do, and joins the US in defending Taiwan in a kinetic war, then I bet we won’t have an exit strategy in the back pocket.
Incidentally, Gerard Henderson thinks that we should stop escalating tensions with China by not talking about it. I trust that Comrade Xi listens carefully to Hendo’s nostrum. He has a standing order for chinese vessels to shoot. He is doing a huge number of overflights of Taiwan’s air space with fighters and nuclear-capable bombers. Shhhh. Don’t talk about it and it will go away all by itself. (This is a recurring theme in Western public discourse about the Taiwan War that Xi has promised us all. The peculiar thing about this approach is that assumes that Xi is a reactor rather than an actor.)
I tend to the opposite view. Let’s get our Taiwan War decision on the table now so that every single Australian understands where Morrison and his China Hawks are taking us. One way or the other.
guytaur
After seeing the shit piles they created in previous recent glorious ‘liberations’ Obama would have known full well what was likely to happen and the dangers. Saying “He meant well’ doesn’t cut it. He and the other NATO peasants own it lock stock and barrel. He certainly owns the mass shipment of arms afterwards from Libya to Syria , much of it ending up with the head choppers. His admin stood by or at times even assisted in it.
Poroti
What part of the word failure you don’t understand?
What part of my point Biden would have learnt from this don’t you understand?
At no point have I claimed Obama had a massive success in Libya.
laughtong @ #124 Saturday, April 17th, 2021 – 1:51 pm
laughtong’
To which you can add ‘Phoenixing’, and the cycle repeats itself again and again and again.
I mean, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were people in business who see a perfectly sound policy put forward in an election campaign, like putting an end to Phoenixing businesses, and vote against it because they directly profit from it. Altruism for the common weal be damned.
BW
I agree with you about putting cards on the table with China on red lines etc. More importantly so did Biden and his team as seen in Alaska. That was diplomacy. Just not the soft spoken kind that is the diplomatic stereotype.
guytaur @ #127 Saturday, April 17th, 2021 – 1:55 pm
guytaur,
It has been shown repeatedly recently that poroti is fixated against all logic and evidence to the contrary about Iraq and, at the time Vice President Biden’s role in counselling against forever wars, but that he was overruled by the Pentagon and President Obama. poroti refuses to acknowledge this. It’s pointless trying to point it out to him. I wouldn’t bother if I were you.
‘poroti says:
Saturday, April 17, 2021 at 1:52 pm
guytaur
After seeing the shit piles they created in previous recent glorious ‘liberations’ Obama would have known full well what was likely to happen and the dangers. Saying “He meant well’ doesn’t cut it. He and the other NATO peasants own it lock stock and barrel. He certainly owns the mass shipment of arms afterwards from Libya to Syria , much of it ending up with the head choppers. His admin stood by or at times even assisted in it.’
Probably even worse is the case that it drove massive destabilization across much of the northern Sahel.
C@tmommasays:
Saturday, April 17, 2021 at 1:47 pm
“I’m not really sure what the end point of all this is ”
The end point should be this current Pandemic.
History is divided by Westerners ‘BC’ and ‘AD’ i.e. ‘Befofe Christ’ and ‘After Death of Christ’ respectively. Now we can divide the history as ‘BC’ and ‘AC’ i.e. ‘ Before COVID’ and ‘After COVID’ . IMO, things changed dramatically after Advent of COVID. People realise the importance of personal relationships, Government, money
Cat
Well we know Biden’s foreign policy credentials. Unlike Obama he is actually getting out of the Middle East.
I must admit Trump made it politically easier but that doesn’t take away Biden is showing his true colours by his actions as President
Edit: As for Poroti I find the claim Obama wanted slave markets as a black man absurd having a cultural legacy of abhorrence to the very concept.
I am not convinced that war over Taiwan is certain. Xi Jinping is approaching 70. Some young turk will knock him off his pedestal before war happens. Young people are smarter than average and are more inclined to discuss their differences.
IMO, aorta charge the parents with negligence:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/apr/17/australia-dingo-attack-toddler-airlifted-to-hospital-after-being-bitten-on-fraser-island
Granny Anny @ #134 Saturday, April 17th, 2021 – 1:36 pm
He’s got another 20 odd years. Mugabe was well into his 90’s when he ‘resigned’.
ItzaDream @ #114 Saturday, April 17th, 2021 – 1:16 pm
Thanks Itza. That’s an excellent article that neatly summarises some of the concepts and irreducible uncertainties that we incompetent medical grunts have so been so alarmist/slack/incomprehensible about explaining to our politico-financial-systems-modelling overlords for some time.
“I don’t hold a policy pipeline Mate.”
Roger Waters put it best in Us & Them:
Us (us, us, us, us) and them (them, them, them, them)
And after all we’re only ordinary men
Me
And you (you, you, you)
God only knows
It’s not what we would choose (choose, choose) to do (to do, to do)
Forward he cried from the rear
And the front rank died
And the general sat
And the lines on the map
Moved from side to side
Black (black, black, black)
And blue (blue, blue)
And who knows which is which and who is who
Up (up, up, up, up)
And down (down, down, down, down)
And in the end it’s only round ‘n round (round, round, round)
Haven’t you heard it’s a battle of words
The poster bearer cried
“Listen son”, said the man with the gun
There’s room for you inside
Us & Them .
‘Granny Anny says:
Saturday, April 17, 2021 at 2:06 pm
I am not convinced that war over Taiwan is certain. Xi Jinping is approaching 70. Some young turk will knock him off his pedestal before war happens. Young people are smarter than average and are more inclined to discuss their differences.’
IMO it is well less than evens that there will be a kinetic war in Taiwan during the next decade. My points are:
(1) The probability is sufficiently high that we need an informed public debate on it.
(2) We should get rid of the sovereignty-reducers that would tend to force us into such a war (joint comms bases, marine rotations in the NT, forward establishment of US munitions and equipment in the NT).
(3) We should pass legislation forcing any war decision to be made by both houses in a joint sitting.
(4) The Australian population needs to know who in Morrison’s suite of advisors is a China Hawk.
(5) We should go all out for a multi-lateral agreement for our preferred course of action.
“Assantdjsays:
Saturday, April 17, 2021 at 1:31 pm”
Small government
ALP will not talk about negative impacts of small government because they do not have a charismatic leader like Whitlam to talk about the benefits of big government. Also, they are in opposition.
Although LNP ran the biggest ‘debt and deficit’ government in Australian history, as soon as ALP starts talking about negative impacts of small government, LNP will scare away people with talk of ‘ debt and deficit’and’ tax and spend’ party.
Tories invented small government to capture government with magic and illusion, do nothing in government so that they take no blame if things go wrong.
Granny
I am no Chris Pine fan. However having western people saying we are willing to go to war over Taiwan is very important at telling the Chinese that it’s not hot air.
So yes some things that sound like they are coming from a war hawk may actually be coming from a desire for peace.
In this with China the US cannot do a Libya and paint red lines and not be willing to back them up.
Biden and allies have to show there is an iron will behind the statement for China to take invasion of Taiwan as being the start of WW3 seriously.
That’s what the West has to do to protect both it’s own interests and the people of Taiwan. The US has a treaty to uphold no matter what legal claims China makes.
That’s why I think the One China policy is under serious threat right now. There are people seriously talking about embassies in Taiwan. A year or two ago serious is not a word you could use about that idea.
“I must admit Trump made it politically easier but that doesn’t take away Biden is showing his true colours by his actions as President”
He sure is…
Biden promised a foreign policy centered on human rights, but is continuing Trump-era policies and practices
* Biden is upholding Trump-era policies on issues like refugee admissions and arms sales.
* Progressives and advocacy groups say Biden is violating his pledge to prioritize human rights.
* AOC called Biden’s decision to uphold Trump’s refugee cap “completely and utterly unacceptable.”
President Joe Biden promised that his foreign policy would mark a major departure from former President Donald Trump, pledging to put human rights and democracy at the center of his approach to global affairs. But on issues ranging from US relations with Gulf states to refugees, Biden is continuing many of Trump’s most divisive and controversial policies and practices – and both progressives in Congress and advocacy groups are not happy.
Trump repeatedly demonized refugees, painting them as a threat to the US, and his administration set the lowest ever cap on refugee admissions for the 2021 fiscal year. On the campaign trail and in the early weeks of his presidency, Biden vowed to reverse that trend and lambasted Trump over his xenophobic refugee policy.
“We used to allow refugees – 125,000 refugees in the United States in a yearly basis,” Biden said during a CNN town hall in February. “It was as high as 250,000. Trump cut it to 5,000. Come with me into Sierra Leone. Come with me into parts of Lebanon. Come with me around the world and see people piled up in camps, kids dying, no way out, refugees fleeing from persecution. We, the United States, used to do our part. We were part of that. We were – and, you know, that’s – you know, ‘send me your huddled masses.’ Come on.”
But the president is now walking back on a promise to open America’s doors to 62,500 refugees this fiscal year, and is keeping Trump’s historically low cap of 15,000 in place, per a directive the president issued on Friday.
After this story was published, the White House said Biden by May 15 would announce a new, increased refugee cap.
…
“Completely and utterly unacceptable,” said Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. “Biden promised to welcome immigrants, and people voted for him based on that promise. Upholding the xenophobic and racist policies of the Trump admin, [including] the historically low + plummeted refugee cap, is flat out wrong. Keep your promise.”
…
More recently, Biden decided to move forward with a Trump era arms deal with the UAE involving the transfer of roughly $23 billion worth of advanced weaponry – including F-35s and drones. The UAE has played an intricate role in the devastating war in Yemen, where US-made bombs have been used in operations leading to civilian deaths.
In February, Biden announced he’s moving to end to US support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. Critics say this arms deal doesn’t exactly jive with that move and Biden’s broader promise to prioritize human rights.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/biden-promised-to-prioritize-human-rights-but-continues-trump-policies-2021-4?r=US&IR=T
poroti @ #92 Saturday, April 17th, 2021 – 11:54 am
There is a reason they are in Syria. Nobody wants them in Xinjiang.
Theo
Having the US out of the Middle East will reduce refugees in the long term. One less power in the region fomenting war.
I know that doesn’t help the South American and other refugees but I will take the hope where I see it.
At least AOC is keeping the bastards honest! Quite the reversal after she delivered a swift public kick up the backside. This is why the right cannot be left to their own devices.
@jonkuldeka tweets
Just enjoy Scott Morrison being booed at the footy. Don’t overthink it. Savour the moment.
guns, guns, guns:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/16/us/indianapolis-mass-shooting-fedex.html
“Having the US out of the Middle East will reduce refugees in the long term. ”
Selling billions in weaponry and drones to the UAE so they can help Saudi Arabia destroy Yemen will not.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian-led_intervention_in_Yemen
One step forward, two steps back.
As I said the other day, it’s about time the US was out of Afghanistan, even the nutter Trump was going to do that, but the reality is that America is still being it’s warmongering and destructive old self. Same old same old. It’s just a continuation of normalcy, rather than a return to it.
Apart from being booed at the footy last night in Perth (or so reported) the local West had a picture of Morrison “helping” clear up storm damage up the coast…….Trouble is this is the same photo op the TV showed last night on Ch9 with all extraneous personnel put about 100 metres in the background while he did his – highly phoney -good deed…………Baseball cap and all………………………..