Before proceeding with the latest preselection news, I have a still-active post with daily updates on the progress of Tasmanian state election count; a live results feature that I can’t promote often enough, since it remains by some distance the most detailed source of results data available; and a lengthy plea for cash from Friday from which I’m still vaguely hopeful of squeezing another donation or two.
On with the show:
• The long-awaited Liberal National Party Senate preselection has allocated top position on the Queensland ticket to James McGrath while relegating Amanda Stoker to third, maintaining an impressive bipartisan run of preselectors never getting anything right. Michael McKenna of The Australian relates that McGrath secured a sweeping 212-101 win from the “biggest ever turnout for a State Council Senate vote”. The second position is designated to the Nationals, and is duly a lock for Matt Canavan.
• Paul Starick of The Advertiser reports that Leah Blyth, who has the backing of the South Australian Liberal Party’s conservative faction to replace the retiring Nicolle Flint in the Adelaide seat of Boothby, may be poleaxed by the Section 44 of the Constitution. Blyth’s efforts to renounce a dual British citizenship even this far out from the election could fall foul of extended processing times arising from COVID-19, although others quoted in the report express doubt that it will really be a problem. Rival contenders include Rachel Swift, moderate-aligned proprietor of a health consultancy firm, and Shaun Osborn, a police officer who ran in the seat of Adelaide in 2019. However, Osborn is hampered by the optics of putting a man forward to replace Flint, whose experiences have been a key element in Liberal efforts to parry suggestions that disrespect for women is particularly a problem on their own side of politics.
• John Ferguson of The Australian reports dissension within Victorian Labor over the likelihood that former state secretary Sam Rae will secure preselection for the new seat of Hawke on Melbourne’s north-western fringe. The report says a draft preselection agreement reserves the seat for the Right faction Transport Workers Union, which remains associated with party powerbroker and former Senator Stephen Conroy. While Conroy evidently backs Rae, “other parts” of the Right are said to favour the position going to a woman, specifically Natalie Hutchins, the Andrews government Corrections Minister and member for the seat of Sydenham.
• Matthew Denholm of The Australian reported last week that “wholesale ALP federal intervention” loomed for the party’s Tasmanian branch, “barring a shock win for the party” at Saturday’s state election – which, for those of you who have just joined us, didn’t happen. The concern is that Left unions use their excessive weight within the branch’s affairs to do foolish things like deny preselection to Dean Winter, who was able to achieve his thumping win in Franklin on Saturday only because the national executive intervened to give him a place on the ticket. This would appear to be relevant to Labor’s preselections for the federal seat of Bass and Braddon, which it lost at the 2019 election, and also to the fate of twice-defeated state leader Rebecca White. The aforesaid Left unions are apparently keen on replacing her with David O’Byrne, who was outpolled in Franklin on Saturday by the aforesaid Dean Winter.
• The Liberal Party has done tellingly extensive research for its submission opposing the registration of a party under the name New Liberals, which included CT Group polling indicating that 69% of respondents believed a party thus named sounded like it had a connection with the other Liberal Party.
“And again, I ask you, would you have preferred Saddam, Uday and Husay to still be running Iraq? I don’t think the Iraqi people themselves would prefer that.”
I don’t think you’re in any position to be speaking for the Iraqi people whatsoever, many of whom have indeed made the point that life got much worse for them after the US invaded.
Want to know who is much worse than Saddam? ISIS, that’s who. Far worse.
Everyone knows that Saddam was a cruel, evil, rotten bastard, but that in no way justifies destroying an entire country, leaving millions of innocents dead, creating millions more refugees, destabilising the entire region (which had devastating flow-on effects for Syria next door), and allowing people far worse than Saddam to move into the power vacuum. And why? All based on a monstrous lie.
Iraq after the US invasion is the definition of a failed state. It’s puppet government is weak. Suicide bombings and other such atrocities are a daily occurrence. The region is rife with warlords and extremist groups, such as the aforementioned ISIS, the likes of whom were kept very much in check by Saddam.
No matter how the likes of John Howard and his supporters try and spin it, the ends do not justify the means. Not even close. The invasion of Iraq was a complete disaster.
Besides, if the criteria for invading a country is that it is ruled by a terrible dictator who is (actually) building weapons of mass destruction, then North Korea would surely be first on the list, not Iraq. But they don’t have huge oil reserves, do they…
doyley,
I reckon the Government was trying to use existing legislation to stamp out people moving to other jurisdictions prior to returning to Australia in an organised way (People smuggling). They clearly did not factor in the blow back generated by the move especially the heavy fines and imprisonment for being an Australian citizen returning home.
Overall, it will still be a win for the Government if they can demonstrate it reduced or slowed the return of Covid infected travellers returning.
Philippine Foreign Minister takes profanity-laced crack at Beijing over its lingering presence in the South China Sea
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-04/phillipine-foreign-minister-china-south-china-sea-teddy-locsin/100113638
“mundosays:
Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 11:45 am
‘Victoria @ #494 Tuesday, May 4th, 2021 – 11:12 am
It is now May 2021. Morrison has had since January last year to put in place fit for purpose quarantine. The hotel quarantine system was a stop gap measure.
No more excuses’
Mr Albanese said earlier this morning.”
Yeah. He has done his job. 🙂
“I vote below the line. So should others.”
Indeed. That is the solution until the broken system is fixed. But many don’t bother voting BTL, especially if it’s a massive tablecloth ballot, which is often the case in these jurisdictions where micro-party preference harvesting takes place. The nature of the broken system actually encourages people to vote above the line to avoid having to weed through and order hundreds of candidates from obscure micro parties they’ve never heard of.
“lizziesays:
Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 12:29 pm
I don’t like this at all.”
Why?
Theo Andelini @ #557 Tuesday, May 4th, 2021 – 1:28 pm
Only need to number 5 candidates below the line.
Ven
The lady believes that Morrison may actually do something to help her. She believes in the “caring, compassionate, Christian Scomo.”
Rex & Firefox rebranded,
It is my understanding that the quota for election in any of Victoria’s Legislative Council regions, is one-sixth of the total votes cast + 1, i.e., 16.67%. Any candidate that reaches the quota in the region will be elected. Sue Pennicuik wasn’t elected because didn’t reach the quota.
The quota in the Legislative Assembly seats is 50% of votes cast + 1. The Greens candidate have won the seat of Prahran on in 2014 & 2018, despite finished third on both occasions.
Please post links to Greens press release about the result in Prahran being corrupt and unfair.
In the unlikely event of Barilaro running a claim to judgment and getting a pile, he will have first dibs on Shanks’ future stream of income.
“Only need to number 5 candidates below the line.”
That’s something at least, but you still have to weed through them all to find the 5 you want. Many wont bother doing that.
Sweden, poster child for the “live with covid”crowd , is not going so well . Currently getting 5000+ cases a day. Equivalent to about 12,500 a day in Australia, their total deaths equivalent to 35,000. Next door neighbor Norway 360 per day. What say you Buce ?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/coronavirus-maps.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage
Good Afternoon
Rex
We see in Tasmania what happens when votes are exhausted city get a Liberal government.
Theo is right the system is broken and people do make bad choices out of ignorance.
However Tasmania with it’s Robson Ballot and letting you choose the member inside the party you want with it’s MMP system of Hare Clark is streets ahead of most voting systems around the world.
Tasmania also doesn’t see many tablecloth ballots. We didn’t see that until the Federal and NSW systems created it.
That most voters prefer to vote above the line really tells you that BTL voting is as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.
The Greens love labelling everything they disagree with as corrupt or immorally.
I’d suggest the Greens just get on with trying to persuade voters to support them rather than looking at ways to game the voting system. Whinging will get them nowhere imho.
Andrews smashed the Greens last time. He’ll do it again next year.
GG,
Yes it will be a win short term for Morrison.
However, what happens after the 15th is the big medium term test for Morrison.
If the pause is lifted the same problems will occur in quarantine. Too many positive cases returning from India. 9000 Australians will be even more desperate to get back to Australia. Howard Springs May be able to handle some of those on top of hotel quarantine but not for long. What happ3ns then ? Another pause ?
If the pause is not lifted then what happens ? Thousands of Australians still locked out. Will Morrison pump more dollars into upgrading existing defence and government facilities or back state government plans for new facilities. If either or both of these get support from Morrison then the questions will flow. Why not earlier and so on.
Yes, Morrison may get a short term win but the problems will still remain.
Anyway, we shall see how it unfolds.
Cheers.
Ven @ #556 Tuesday, May 4th, 2021 – 1:29 pm
Getting attention and assistance from the PM of Australia shouldn’t require or benefit from conducting oneself as a member of his particular family of beliefs?
The religiosity of the thing is bothersome, as is the amount of attention the woman appears to have gotten because of it. Would the same outcome have occurred if she had just politely asked for help, without invoking the religious overtones? Seems doubtful. So I don’t like it either.
a r
I agree.
Over 50, it is supposed to be. Rang the doctors surgery. Sorry mate still only doing over 70’s government has not delivered any vaccine.
Clearly still supply issues.
In Victoria links to booking dead, ring up on provided numbers, no booking option given in the recorded message.
I suppose it is line up and see if you get turned away. What a f…ing mess.
Good ol Barnaby. Still got influence.
GG
MMP works well. It’s democratic and does represent the electorate better.
MMP does not lock out either right or left politics. It does give representation of the electorate. Even when that representation is uncomfortable for the business as usual types at Murdoch media.
Remember. Murdoch opposes minority governments. Yet Germany has had minority government for years. There is nothing unstable about it.
Keep your partisan political hat off when talking electoral systems. Don’t help Murdoch’s un democratic agenda.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-s-complacency-not-racism-led-to-india-ban-20210503-p57oef.html?js-chunk-not-found-refresh=true
I’m happy to see the mainstream media finally saying what needs to be said..
The horse has bolted on fit-for-purpose quarantine. Its only a matter of time now before the states will go it alone and build them. Which then will hopefully put pressure on Gladys to do the right thing.
Also, and more importantly, the media is finally starting to grab onto the fact that we need herd immunity and that we need updated vaccines to get there.
https://www.energyaustralia.com.au/about-us/media/news/energyaustralia-gives-green-light-australias-first-net-zero-emissions
Absolutely no need for the Morrison-Shorten gas plant on the Lib donors block of land at Kurri Kurri now. 🙂
Biden moves away from the President Trump PM Howard refugee policy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-refugee/2021/05/03/1b833126-ac4d-11eb-ab4c-986555a1c511_story.html
And so the beginning of the end begins……
.
.
KANDAHAR DISPATCH
Day 1 of the End of the U.S. War in Afghanistan
The scenes over the weekend were almost as if a multitrillion-dollar effort had morphed into a garage sale.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/world/asia/afghanistan-us-military-withdrawal.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
After successfully launching a module for its space station last Thursday, a piece of China’s Long March 5B rocket is now on course for an uncontrolled re-entry back to Earth.
According to Spacenews, the core stage of the rocket could re-enter Earth’s atmosphere over Wellington anytime over the next days or week.
However, the space-focused news site also points out there are other possibilities of where the debris could enter the atmosphere.
“The orbital inclination of 41.5 degrees means the rocket body passes a little farther north than New York, Madrid and Beijing and as far south as southern Chile,” Spacenews reports.
At around 21 tonnes, it would be the largest uncontrolled re-entry of a spacecraft, which has the potential to crash into an inhabited area. Spacenews points out, however, that the chances of it crashing into a populated area are a lot smaller than it impacting an uninhabited zone, or the sea.
Watson Watch:
The salient difference here is that the in the Legislative Assembly case, all of those preferences were individually selected and entered by voters.
In the Legislative Council case, the overwhelming majority of those preferences were selected by parties (here the term “party” means “one of a large number of small front groups with few members, fewer policies and completely unknown to almost all voters”) orchestrated as part of Druery’s GTV lottery.
“Please post links to Greens press release about the result in Prahran being corrupt and unfair.”
Who’s the one doing the re-branding now, “Watson”? Funny. Anyway…
What happened in Prahran is not even remotely close to what we are talking about in relation to micro-party preference harvesting in the upper house.
The Greens won Prahran for the first time in 2014 with a large primary vote of almost 25% before preferences.
Sustainable Australia won an upper house seat at the expense of the Greens in 2018 with a primary vote of 1.32%.
To compare these two results is absurd. It just highlights how hopelessly out of whack the upper house system is.
“ In the unlikely event of Barilaro running a claim to judgment and getting a pile, he will have first dibs on Shanks’ future stream of income.”
How much and for how long? Not my area of law, but I thought there were limitations on how much and for how long Bruz could claim dibs? Ie. Assuming a Bruz induced Jordy bankruptcy, I thought that at the other side of the bankruptcy a former bankrupt is good to keep any earnings against creditors that precede the bankruptcy?
For the Mark Latham style Labor people.
You are on a losing battle with Woke. Look who is doing woke policy.
https://www.newsweek.com/critics-slam-woke-cia-recruitment-video-i-am-intersectional-1588190
Julian Assange didn’t manage well when he took on the CIA. You won’t either. Assange had a far more credible position with it.
Theo Andelini @ #560 Tuesday, May 4th, 2021 – 1:33 pm
Surprisingly perhaps it seems many did. Dean Winter is a case in point.
Voters clearly knew who they intended voting for given the ballot is randomly formatted in relation to the order of names.
On my ballot Winter was 5th down the Labor column. On my wife’s he was 2nd. Winter topped the Labor poll in Franklin.
I’m pretty sure the table cloth ballots pre-dated group voting. Group voting was a response to the table cloth ballots.
I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong but that’s my memory.
Why the table cloth ballots came about is another question the answer to which I can remember.
I suppose the answer to this and other riveting questions is a Google away but I’m more interested in listening to my latest Steven Wilson reworking of a historical piece of music.
😊
Aqualung
If you are commenting on my point. Tasmania’s Hare Clark system started long before tablecloth size ballots appeared.
The current passion of the LNP to sue folk for defamation doesn’t seem to stop with the hurt feelings of elected politicians. LNP Spear-carriers, including public servants without apparent means to fund such litigation, are getting in on the act in a blatant attempt to get independent media voices to shut the fuck up if they are not prepared to to the current ‘drums of war’ party line:
https://youtu.be/DSAamYc8Hp4
AE
I think all the assets vest in the bankruptcy trustee plus there has to be accounting for at least a proportion of the continuing income and of course the trustee has even more priority for his/her fees.
This is all very remote but bankruptcy is of course ruinous and nothing to be glib about.
Guytaur I was making a general comment about the table cloth ballots and group voting.
It seemed to me that at the time the simple solution would have been a minimum number of boxes marked but some genius came up with group voting.
I know nothing about Hare Clarke and wouldn’t comment on it.
Yes! Vote Green and lets turf the Libs out!
Aqualung:
You have the causality wrong. The “tablecloth ballot” arose in an environment where Group Ticket Voting already existed, because it became increasingly clear that any yahoo stood a chance of getting their bum onto the red leather for a few years if their front party joined a large preference cartel and they were lucky enough to be the one to catch the snowball.
caf @ #535 Tuesday, May 4th, 2021 – 12:46 pm
Oh come on!
Mr Brooks has been repeatedly backed by the Tasmanian Liberal Party including its leader, Peter Gutwein, who last week suggested someone was stealing Mr Brooks’s identity because “he’s a good-looking bloke”.
He’s as good-looking as a toad.
No worries caf, I originally said I thought group voting was a response to table cloths but was happy to be corrected as I was doing something else.
Cheers
Bandt doesn’t have credibility on public housing when the Green run City of Yarra in his electorate voted against a social housing project.
“ AE
I think all the assets vest in the bankruptcy trustee plus there has to be accounting for at least a proportion of the continuing income and of course the trustee has even more priority for his/her fees.
This is all very remote but bankruptcy is of course ruinous and nothing to be glib about.”
I think the key is to plan your prospective bankruptcy carefully. Lols. So the trustee will get Jordy’s Hyundai i30. As a utuber and stand up comedian the accounting for continuing and future income would be tricky to say the least. Especially if Jordy demonetised his revenue stream for his performances whilst bankrupt (or simply diverted it to donations to the ACF or some such) – and got a dead end causal job at Coles for the period of the bankruptcy to live off.
Trump proved that you can make a well planned bankruptcy work in one’s favour, after all.
Shellbell,
I agree.
As a Mortgage Broker people bankrupting themselves over phone bills and credit card debt is often creating a long term problem as it is a red flag for most Lenders even after the expiry of the the Bankruptcy term. People really should consider other options such as credit repair where you appoint a representative to negotiate an outcome with the Lenders rather than fall in to Bankruptcy.
Lenders engineering customers in to insurmountable debt is a very handy weapon against Banks when they are up against someone who understands the intricacies of Credit. Phone Companies and others are nearly always found to have not followed proper procedure. So, often debts can be reduced and or payment plans can be put in place.
My record is 30 credit cards paid out at 50% for one client.
https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/brisbane-blitz-revealed-greens-plan-to-target-queensland/news-story/2dd9ba9e165f45436da4a3b756323884
Greens vs Hanson vs Stoker for the last Senate spot. Labor voters in QLD remember to preference the Greens above PHON and the LNP and lets get rid of them together.
MMP helps lazy politicans get elected and there are seat warmers in single member electorates but they still need to win 50.01% way more than the MMP slackers.
Andrew_Earlwood says:
Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 2:14 pm
Three points after watching the vid:
1. Why shouldn’t someone who “doesn’t have the means” not be able to defend themselves against defamation?
2. The reason that the letter gets sent without, as MW put it, some prior negotiation is because the prior negotiation normally goes something like this: “ring ring – Hi, what you’ve said is wrong and/or inaccurate – please take it down and apologise” “No! and GAGF” “OK, you’ll be getting a letter form my lawyer.”
3. The law applies to everyone, including old people, so why Mr Menadue’s age is a factor is beyond me – unless he’s not mentally capable anymore, which I strongly doubt.