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.
Bucephalus says:
Wednesday, May 5, 2021 at 12:08 pm
N says:
Wednesday, May 5, 2021 at 12:04 pm
“The near-total obliteration of the WA State Liberals can be attributed to Morrison”
No, that was purely self-inflicted.
Oh the lulz. Morrison aligned the Liberals with Palmer and against the interests of every Western Australian. Harvey made the error of following Morrison. Voters have twigged. The Liberals put political tic-toc ahead of their well-being and contentment all the time. They have forfeited the trust they once had. Morrison is responsible for that. I hope their obliteration is repeated at the Federal election.
Bucephalus @ #912 Wednesday, May 5th, 2021 – 9:36 am
Why does she need to?
You’ve said before that Australia and NZ’s need to vaccinate in the immediate term, beyond shoring up quarantine and heath workers, is low.
She clearly set out the vaccine roll out and it is progressing as planned.
Our Government shot their mouths of as usual, raising expectations, and have now discovered that our capabilities and abilities are extremely lacking.
Is it surprising who is copping flack.
They’ve done the same recently with India by using strong, aggressive language instead of calmly explaining the process people need to go through to return to Australia.
The continual use of the word “ban” is a lie and does nothing to help reassure Australian’s in India during what must be a very concerning time.
The trouble with people who think that God is speaking to them is that eventually they can come to believe that they are God.
Richard Edinger @ #941 Wednesday, May 5th, 2021 – 12:05 pm
So that’s who you are, Buce.
The naval officer in the picture looks really apprehensive.
Sorry N, I edited my typo to correct from N to Bu.
There’s no way I’d get the two of you confused! 🙂 I agree with you (N) completely.
Melissa Price might have the same outfitter as Gina Reinhardt – must be a WA thing?
N says:
Wednesday, May 5, 2021 at 12:09 pm
“My life work, savings and daily living have been destroyed by climate change. The greenhouse effect reduced me to destitution.”
Did you invest in Wave Power – there’s plenty of those wrecked all around Australia and the world. Or a failed Wind or Solar farm? There’s plenty of those around Australia and the world. Bio Fuel? I lost a bit on that too.
Barney in Tanjung Bunga says:
Wednesday, May 5, 2021 at 12:14 pm
I agree that there isn’t a massively pressing need to get those beyond the high risk vaccinated. As I said, the population is getting vaccinated and most will be done well before the next election.
Bucephalus
Oh noes some renewable schemes failed. Shit loads of car types/manufacturers bit the dust on the way to replacing ‘horse and buggy’ . Didn’t stop the inevitable.
Bucephalus @ #955 Wednesday, May 5th, 2021 – 10:25 am
So what’s the point of comparing Australia and NZ?
Sohar
He might be worried about the ship starting to list.
The naval officer in the picture looks really apprehensive.
Did he just realise that the white-painted circle was in fact a trapdoor?
Poor Bucephalus has to dig out a contrary view to every PB post. What a hobby!
Barney in Tanjung Bunga
Buce didn’t get the memo from HQ.
Bucephalus @ #929 Wednesday, May 5th, 2021 – 11:57 am
Saying “I aren’t” is giving stupid a pretty good run for the money.
lizzie says:
Wednesday, May 5, 2021 at 12:29 pm
“Poor Bucephalus has to dig out a contrary view to every PB post.”
Don’t you find it strange that the Federal ALP keeps losing elections and the same thing keeps being said in this forum? Just possibly the lack of self-introspection and lack of acknowledgement that, just maybe, they don’t reflect or understand what matters to voters both within the ALP and here could possibly be a problem?
lizzie @ #900 Wednesday, May 5th, 2021 – 11:17 am
The bloke is nothing more than a suburban used car salesman.
He abandoned Australians during the catastrophic firestorm and fled to Hawaii.
He abandoned Australians caught in India where the air is thick with coronavirus.
He’s a total failure as PM and nothing he says can be believed.
ItzaDreamsays:
Wednesday, May 5, 2021 at 12:32 pm
“Saying “I aren’t” is giving stupid a pretty good run for the money.”
I try my best.
It’s true Labor is struggling to win government. That’s because they are trying to sell hard truths while the Coalition go with easy lies. For example, the Coalition “winning” the political fight over Global Warming, and convincing Australian voters that there’s nothing to see here, isn’t going to prevent Global Warming, it simply means we’re going to do nothing until its too late.
Global Warming is not inherently a left-right tribal issue. It’s been made one by political (and profit seeking) opportunists on the right, who have managed to convince Australia to engage in self-destructive behaviour.
DN,
It has also been made a party political circus by the Greens and their lefty friends spending valuable time virtue signalling and constantly reminding us all they are self righteous twats.
The Age 05/05.
However, CQV Commissioner Emma Cassar stood by the government’s previous explanation that the man’s nebuliser triggered the outbreak by spreading the virus throughout the hotel.
“The working hypothesis is still, as I understand, that this was caused by the nebuliser,” she said.
________________
Give it up Emma. You are making a dickhead of yourself.
Your own report says it was a health worker not following procedures in the corridor rather than the nebuliser
You owe the asthma sufferer a public apology.
DisplayName
I blame scum like the Koch Bros. They and others in the petroleum industry corrupted the climate change discussion by pouring $millions into the pockets’ of pollies and organisations willing to shill for money.
Some lovely stuff here:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/gallery/2021/may/05/in-the-green-room-the-2021-nikon-surf-photography-awards
Are we allowed to make jokes about Stuart MacGill getting kidnapped and released?
Re Scomo all at sea: if there’s an iceberg in Far North Queensland, you can be sure Scotty will run into it.
There are doubts about aspects of The Australian’s report.
This is a Guardian report of Merlino’s statement to Parliament an hour ago.
“Acting Victorian premier James Merlino maintains the use of a nebuliser machine by an infected man in hotel quarantine was still a “significant” contributor to the Holiday Inn outbreak and subsequent lockdown.
He says opposition leader Micheal O’Brien is “completely wrong after he demanded Merlino apologise to the man.
This conversation in parliament was born out of a report in the Australian newspaper alleging the outbreak was caused by the lengthy swabbing of an unmasked woman in an open doorway, and not from the room of a man using the nebuliser”.
Guardian Australia has not independently confirmed this report.
DisplayName says:
Wednesday, May 5, 2021 at 12:47 pm
“Global Warming is not inherently a left-right tribal issue. It’s been made one by political (and profit seeking) opportunists on the right”
Oh, FFS, you might think we are morons but we aren’t total morons. AGW became the raison d’etre for the watermelons in the Green Movement and the Left with the collapse of Warsaw Pact. No more Nuclear War and Weapons to scare the public and have big protests so they adopted AGW as the next big thing. That and “inequality” became the intractable problems that will likely last lifetimes.
C@tmomma @ #908 Wednesday, May 5th, 2021 – 11:30 am
It’s not (usually) a conventional “cytokine storm” that drives the majority of the morbidity in COVID-19, it’s a lymphocyte “storm” – a very different thing, with very different outcomes. The difference is complex, but it actually matters to some of us in the real world – though not, I admit, in a Glasgow Pub. For an adult, you can be fairly (so-called) adolescent.
Buce
Global Warming was adopted as “the next big thing” because it is significant and happening. It won’t stop simply because you make it out to be some left wing conspiracy, or convince others that it is one.
Yep, it’s time to kick the Libs out and start making the rich elite pay their fair share. Just look at the disgraceful attitude of the likes of Gerry Harvey…
Gerry Harvey won’t follow Lew’s lead on returning JobKeeper funds
Billionaire retailer Solomon Lew’s unexpected decision to repay $15.6 million in government JobKeeper subsidies will not be followed by a number of other notable ASX-listed recipients, including Harvey Norman founder Gerry Harvey.
…
Mr Harvey confirmed to The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on Monday his position on repaying the subsidy remained unchanged. The 81-year-old businessman has previously said he would not repay the approximately $6 million claimed by his electronics retailer due to it being a “tiny amount of money”. He has also said the company will repay it through higher taxes.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/gerry-harvey-won-t-follow-lew-s-lead-on-returning-jobkeeper-funds-20210503-p57oal.html
$6 million may be a “tiny amount of money” to a billionaire but to the rest of us it’s an absolute fortune! He’s living in a different reality to everyone else. What a sick joke.
Buucephalus
Put the hat away. Tin foil is bad for your health. Maggie T was on to it in the late 1980s. Environmentalists would have had it on the radar even longer. As for you dot connecting lol , Aus. Greens formed 1992.
Uh-oh.
Community transmission case in western Sydney. Gladys just announcing.
“New case of locally acquired Covid-19 in Sydney
This just out from NSW Health: NSW Health has been notified this morning of a new COVID-19 case in a person who resides in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
Urgent investigations into the source of the infection and contact tracing are underway.
It is understood the case, a man in his 50s, has not travelled overseas in recent times and he does not work in a hotel quarantine, border or health role.
The man underwent testing yesterday (Tuesday 4 May) and returned a positive result today (Wednesday 5 May). This case will be included in tomorrow’s numbers.
Genome sequencing is underway, with results expected in the next 24 hours.
Close contacts are being urgently contacted, tested and isolating. The man visited a number of venues while potentially infectious.
Anyone who attended one of the following venues at the times specified is asked to immediately get tested and isolate until NSW Health provides further information.
This advice applies to everyone, including those people who may have been partially or fully vaccinated.”
Typical Libs wasting money on vandalising the environment. Yep, it should be going to schools, hospitals, renewables, and a thousand other far more worthwhile investments. Their priorities are all out of whack.
poroti says:
Wednesday, May 5, 2021 at 1:09 pm
“Aus. Greens formed 1992.” Yep, collapse of Warsaw Pact 1991. Jo Valentine in WA was the leading anti-nuclear Campaigner.
Mar 10, 2021
This is not a race’: Government defends pace of vaccination rollout
It is a race – against the Virus and especially against mutations. Can our luck with hotel quarantine hold for a year or more longer? Every escape squashed before doing too much damage as has been the case in the last six months?
No amount of sugar-coating by the blue side gets away from the fact that the CV roll-out has been/still is a shambles.
“Four million vaccinated by the end of April” …
Total and utter media crap by Morrison. He and the old lady (and his family) first up weeks ago to trumpet his promise…………..fail
Just waiting now for Morrison and Dutton to declare war on China to save us all…..
Some Liberal supporters in WA are bemoaning how people could be so blind to vote for McGowan without one ounce of irony that they are blind and stupid to not see through Morrison…
Bucephalus says:
Wednesday, May 5, 2021 at 12:21 pm
N says:
Wednesday, May 5, 2021 at 12:09 pm
“My life work, savings and daily living have been destroyed by climate change. The greenhouse effect reduced me to destitution.”
Did you invest in Wave Power – there’s plenty of those wrecked all around Australia and the world. Or a failed Wind or Solar farm? There’s plenty of those around Australia and the world. Bio Fuel? I lost a bit on that too.
Nope. Or, as Tony Abbott would say, “Nope.”
I had the misfortune of relying on production from the marine environment….on eco-systems which have changed so much so quickly that the species on which I depended have almost disappeared. They cannot/will not regenerate. This is entirely driven by warming of the coastal littoral. Irreversible warming. Populations that have been replicating themselves since the last ice age – populations that were living history – have vanished. This is a glimpse not merely of the future but of the present and the recent past. These effects are entirely due to climate change. They foreshadow the impending destruction of biological systems and species all around the planet.
But you – a fucked-up Lib – will ignore this or make light of it. You will sneer at it. You do this because you are a reactionary who has no stomach for change. Change will be forced upon us all, in the same way as it has been forced upon me and all those with whom I’ve worked and lived. I think you are a coward and
I think you are a fool.
Bucephalussays:
Wednesday, May 5, 2021 at 12:52 pm
Are we allowed to make jokes about Stuart MacGill getting kidnapped and released?
___________________________________
No.
Consider this your first Warne-ing.
Perth seems to have had a lucky escape recently now a nervous few days in Sydney town, a positive test and..
.
.
Dr Kerry Chant said the man had not recently returned from overseas, did not work in quarantine and had no contacts with the hospital system……….. the man had a high viral load, suggesting he was potentially highly infectious, which was cause for concern.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/man-in-sydney-s-eastern-suburbs-tests-positive-to-covid-20210505-p57p37.html
More Libs potentially under pressure from vote xxx out campaigns- not just Angus.
https://the-riotact.com/campaign-to-oust-angus-taylor-gains-momentum/459185
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/may/05/victorian-quarantine-manager-stood-down-over-allegations-of-covid-infection-control-breach
So he got tested afterall on the same day.
Another beat up by Lib media.
GladysB is playing the gender card, critiquing Labor and the Greens for voting for a ‘Liberal male’ rather than a ‘Liberal female’ for the Presidency of the NSW Upper House.
She failed to reflect on the dysfunction in her party between the Uglies and the Moderates (so-called) – but she did say the rogue Liberal is being expelled from her party.
Theo
Adam Bandt can tweet all he likes about public housing but he isn’t serious about public housing or he would get his green members on the City of Yarra to reverse their opposition to public housing.
More Lib politicians potentially under pressure from vote xxx out campaigns
https://the-riotact.com/campaign-to-oust-angus-taylor-gains-momentum/459185
KayJay says:
Wednesday, May 5, 2021 at 9:33 am
What is more likely is that our world class morons are playing to even moroner effwits in the community with their baiting “run over them with out landrovers” bullshit.
In the meanwhile the old man with the lantern continues his search ..
—————————————————————————-
as featured in Rodgers and Hart’s brilliant, witty, funny, melodic take on “A Comedy of Errors.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCJDUWZEIXA
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/may/05/victorian-quarantine-manager-stood-down-over-allegations-of-covid-infection-control-breach
We know HQ has had problems across the country, so when will Morrison stop failing at his job and take responsibility by building proper quarantine infrastructure ..???