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.
It’s NEVER BEEN SO CLEAR to see a Govt and Prime Minister so totally invested in their donors and mates at the expense of the people.
If ever there needs to be ‘Campbell Newman’ type of defeat for Morrison, it needs to be at this coming election.
@fehowarth tweets
It was said that within an hour of the ABC launching their defence, Porter’s lawyers were in court seeking the defence documents not be released to the public. I wonder what the ABC has filed to get such a quick reaction? #auspol2021 #auspol
Sprocket
Good list. There’s still some doubt about the nature of the Avalon cluster. That may have been someone allowed to self quarantine.
Both of these tweets are correct.
@Asher_Wolf tweets
The ALP introduced data matching in 2010. LNP pulled the trigger by removing manual oversights on robodebts in 2016, but the ALP created a weapon against the masses by not instituting oversight and guardrails on data matching and then handing the system to a Coalition gvt
@AlboMP tweets
Mr Morrison turns a blind eye while companies bank their JobKeeper payments or use them to pay out millions in big bonuses to executives. Contrast that with his creation of robodebt.
Strong against the weak, weak against the strong. That’s the LNP in a nutshell.
The Court of Appeal dealt with the Folbigg specifically and not generally as Professor Shine’s quote suggests. He should endeavour to deal with the specifics. Plus there is non-scientific evidence pointing to guilt:
“This was not a case in which the judicial officer’s conclusion was at odds with the scientific evidence. The scientific evidence raised a theoretical possibility that there were innocent explanations for the deaths of the two girls. However, the judicial officer was required to consider evidence that, although the CALM2 abnormality in Ms Folbigg and the two girls involved a change in an amino acid in the vicinity of Gly114, their circumstances departed from the reported cases of deaths associated with CALM abnormalities. In particular, (i) the change in the affected amino acid was not the same, (ii) the change in the Folbiggs’ genome was hereditary and not de novo, (iii) the girls died at younger ages, (iv) the girls apparently died suddenly when asleep and not during exertion, (v) there was an absence of prior symptomatology, and (vi) Ms Folbigg did not have LQTS or CPVT, being cardiac manifestations commonly associated with it. The girls’ deaths were thus “outliers” when compared with those reported in the literature. Further, the boys’ genomes provided no common cause. When these matters were weighed with the inculpatory inferences derived from Ms Folbigg’s diary entries and her evidence in seeking to present innocent explanations of them, there was an ample basis, consistent with the scientific evidence, for the judicial officer to conclude that there was no reasonable doubt as to Ms Folbigg’s guilt.”
Morrison has already laid the groundwork for having the NT compensate (pro-rata) the Chinese corporation that entered into a lease with the then (2015) Tory government. Thus – anathema to the doctrine of privity of contract – we have a third party – the Cth – considering whether or not to terminate the Darwin Port lease. While there’s no doubt the legislation that allows the Cth to terminate the instant lease overrides contract law, it’s certainly quite inequitable to expect the NT to compensate the Chinese-owned Landbridge
Group some $500m. I feel a HC challenge coming on.
9 years of LNP government, yet we still have people blaming Labor for the Liberal party misusing government resources … sad, this is why the LNP win.
China’s miscalculation on trade deal helps Biden rebuild the Western Front
When, on the final day of 2020, China signed a trade pact with the European Union its leadership would have congratulated themselves on their cleverness in sidelining the EU from the escalating confrontation with the US before the incoming Biden administration had a chance to enter the White House. They don’t look quite so clever now.
The agreement, however, was conditional on final approval by the European Parliament.
Almost from the moment Biden was inaugurated he dispatched envoys to America’s traditional allies, seeking to re-establish traditional alliances and create common ground and a more unified pushback to China across a range of issues, from its economic policies, its Belt and Road initiative to its human rights abuses in Xinjiang and its treatment of Hong Kong.
In March those efforts bore fruit, with the EU joining the US, UK and Canada in sanctioning Chinese individuals and entities for their treatment of the Uighurs.
Almost reflexively, China retaliated, imposing its own “tit-for-tat” sanctions on a number of EU lawmakers and other individuals and several EU think tanks.
That was a miscalculation. Targeting members of the European Parliament that were being asked to ratify the trade deal infuriated fellow parliamentarians and has played into the hands of those in Europe who want to side with the US in the collision with China.
After seven years of negotiation and despite the last-minute concessions the EU has made it clear that it won’t approve the agreement while the sanctions on its officials remain in place.
Even if China were to lift the sanctions, it might be too late to salvage the deal.
Merkel is now promoting the potential of a trade deal between the EU and the US.
The speed at which the Biden administration has moved and the degree of success it is having in rebuilding the relationships with disgruntled former allies that Trump fractured will have taken China’s leadership aback. In Europe, they haven’t helped themselves
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/china-s-miscalculation-on-trade-deal-helps-biden-rebuild-the-western-front-20210506-p57pfg.html
Nicko @ #1405 Thursday, May 6th, 2021 – 2:21 pm
Because Morrison does it himself at every turn.
Almost reflexively, China retaliated, imposing its own “tit-for-tat” sanctions on a number of EU lawmakers and other individuals and several EU think tanks.
I think this can be filed under, ‘cutting off your nose despite your face’. 🙂
I said it before and I’ll say it again, China is going to find out in a hurry that stuff it makes can be bought elsewhere in the world just as cheaply and it comes with no strings attached.
Blatant vandalism.
We’re transforming our planet Earth paradise into a dustbowl.
Rex
I think you’ll find that we’re transforming our planet into a desert paradise for these kinds of animals: https://sciencing.com/animals-live-hot-dry-desert-6813301.html
Rex D
Rather than vandalism it is helping your maaates. The taxpayers will end up on the hook for $billions to make up for the shortfall the Coal peasants were allowed to leave. $Billions that went into the Coal maaates’ pockets.
poroti
You think Scott Morrison has mates of the dung beetle variety? Show some loyalty to your own species, ScoMo!
C@tmomma @ #1408 Thursday, May 6th, 2021 – 2:27 pm
Dream on.
Cat,
I am so sick of blame Labor for everything the LNP does, like as if the people in the LNP are just lemmings that aern’t able to think for themselves, always excused for their horrible polices, stuff ups and corrupt behaviour. Somehow it is Labors fault.
Basically this Government hasn’t done anything right when it comes to covid, just about any real idea of substance like JobKeeper wasn’t even theirs, every single time they have had to be dragged kicking and screaming, and now we see the same thing with Quarantining.
Why is this government been given any benefit of doubt, where is the howling from the media over all the stuff ups the laziness.
Every single time they act so slow and lazy about almost everything they do, and we still see excuses made, this is such the opposite to how Labor was treated in government.
The corporate world invested in China because of their cheap labour and sold thousands of local jobs down the river to make more company profits off the back of the poor. Now all they do is whinge about it.Its their own fault for dealing with a communist regime when they rail against communists in virtually every westernised country.Dickheadedness and greed at its corporate best.
P1
Cat is correct.
What China has that cannot be sourced elsewhere is it’s consumer market. However like the US China depends on the rest of the world to supply that consumer market.
Nicko
I refer you to the agreement of Rudd and Turnbull on Murdoch.
I also refer you to the GetUp advert on the ABC.
The for profit media has a vested interest in backing the neoliberal ideology.
Labor has to recognise that even Keynesian centrism economics is an enemy to these for profit companies.
Plan strategy around this fact. This is not an excuse to punch left in the process that only helps the neoliberal right wing push their tropes.
Edit: Subscription models replacing advertising is helping to undo the extreme end of this. You can have good non profit subscription business models compete.
What a surprise. Player One had a dig at me that I couldn’t see. 🙄
Thank you, guytaur for defending me. I know we don’t agree on everything so I appreciate it all the more!
guytaur says:
Thursday, May 6, 2021 at 12:49 pm
N
Keep lying to yourself.
I think Labor people are starting to wake up about your fantasy.
You’re a case in point…an embodiment of LINO-cut Green-sweet Labor phobia.
guytaur @ #1416 Thursday, May 6th, 2021 – 2:49 pm
Nonsense. For example: China steel producers makes more steel products than the entire rest of the world combined. Their net steel exports (i.e. exports – imports) are nearly as large as the three next biggest countries combined. And this is just one industry.
Do you really think this scale of manufacturing can be shifted “in a hurry” and “just as cheaply” away from China?
This is not just fantasy. This is dangerously delusional.
C@tmomma @ #1418 Thursday, May 6th, 2021 – 2:59 pm
Feeling left out again, C@t? Did someone interrupt your cat nap?
steve davis says:
Thursday, May 6, 2021 at 2:49 pm
The corporate world invested in China because of their cheap labour and sold thousands of local jobs down the river to make more company profits off the back of the poor. Now all they do is whinge about it.Its their own fault for dealing with a communist regime when they rail against communists in virtually every westernised country.Dickheadedness and greed at its corporate best.
————————————-
That was true but China is no longer the cheapest place to manufacture in Asia so nowadays businesses go to China because there is over a billion potential customers but many people made the mistake of thinking by opening up meant China was going to go the full hog and become a westernised democracy.
How about the nsw alp ransomware situation?
Pay up or have the confidential information posted on line !
Will be interesting to see what happens – and if it’s stoppable .
C@t any inside information you can share on the situation ?
Tit for tat response by China:
https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/china-suspends-china-australia-strategic-economic-dialogue-indefinitely-20210506-p57phc.html
Player One
Not only but also the Chinese economy is going down the path Western nations went down as they developed, towards a consumer based economy. Something that will change a lot of assumptions/calculations.
.
.
Chinese consumer spending is set to double by 2030, Morgan Stanley predicts.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/29/chinese-consumer-spending-to-double-by-2030-morgan-stanley-predicts.html
The Rise of China’s New Consumer Class – Goldman Sachs
https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/macroeconomic-insights/growth-of-china/chinese-consumer/
In a nutshell
Amy Remeikis
@AmyRemeikis
·
5h
Hotel rooms aren’t set up as quarantine facilities. The government has had more than a year to establish or expand actual quarantine facilities and hasn’t. The vaccine program is delayed. THAT is why we’ve banned citizens. Because the govt wasn’t prepared. No other reason.
That was true but nowadays its more to do with there being over a billion potential customers.
China is no longer the cheapest place to manufacture in Asia.
I agree with that too. They created their own middle class society with many consumers, built major infrastructure and wages went up with it. I wouldnt have expected them to do anything else.
I hope the drongos in the western world didnt think otherwise.
What’s this stunt about ..?
Will Jodie be commenting on the ransomware attack?
Victoria @ #1426 Thursday, May 6th, 2021 – 3:14 pm
More interested in ways to steal taxpayer monies to give to their mates and donors (Matekeeper).
guytaur says:
Thursday, May 6, 2021 at 2:49 pm
……China depends on the rest of the world to supply that consumer market.
This is a fallacy to a large degree. It’s the kind of line pushed by Tony Abbott and the National Party. They suppose that China needs us more than we need them and that trade pressure will work to our advantage. This is deluded. The idea that we can call the tune with China is just wrong.
While China might reduce its trade with us and we might reduce our trade with China, this will hurt both sides. However, it will hurt us disproportionately more. The China economy is very large and diversified. China’s share of world trade is considerably smaller than its share of the world economy. The China economy is far less trade-dependent than ours. The international trade sector (imports and exports together) equates to almost half of the total economy in this country, and China is by far our largest trading partner. So it has a large share in the largest part of our economy. The reverse is just not true.
In the covid era, it would also be a mistake to think substitutes for China as suppliers or customers can be easily found. Trade is relationship-based. Commercial relationships take years – decades – to foster. It’s just about impossible to commence new relationships at present.
Rex
It’s good to see Labor with a spine. Federal Labor can learn from this Labor NSW example.
poroti @ #1425 Thursday, May 6th, 2021 – 3:13 pm
Yes, and this is precisely what is worrying the US. China’s economic trajectory will see them overtake the US within just a few years – it was expected to happen by 2028, but it now looks like it may happen sooner.
The US is currently pushing countries like us to damage our own economy to try and bring China down.
And we are apparently stupid enough to do it 🙁
N
I am not taking an extreme position.
I am recognising the reality that China’s major advantage is it’s consumer market. Just ask Apple.
_____________
P1
No one mentioned a timeline. Yes losing access to those consumers damages our economy. While we are a quarry we can’t talk about manufacturing. That’s being decided in US boardrooms
P1
Nah, I think we came up with that brilliant idea and volunteered to be the guinea pig all on our own :P.
We punch above our weight!
Jo Haylen must have stepped back inside
https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/pages/la-webcast-page.aspx
Bring China down? We are the mouse and China is a lion. We would be in the gutter way before they ever would.
An interesting bit in the business news on the ABC. The company Microsoft is bigger than all the companies listed on the ASX put together.Thats how small and insignificant we are on the world stage.
Hopefully this will change attitudes.
Player One @ #1413 Thursday, May 6th, 2021 – 3:03 pm
Yeah, that. China imports raw materials and exports ridiculously cheap finished goods. The rest of the world can disrupt their input, possibly, but there’s no equivalent source of output. Some other nations can provide comparable (and often, better quality) finished goods, but not at the same volume or for the same cost. It’s not like the world can divert its silicon and copper to Australia and suddenly we’d be able to produce and export enough PCB’s, semiconductors, and IC’s to satisfy global demand.
If the world wants to stop rewarding China for its aggressive territory-grabs and oppressive domestic policies that’s probably a good thing. Though can’t pretend that that fallout for that will be all, or even mostly, on China.
We’d have to be willing to take some pain on that, too. And generally, we aren’t. Case in point, inaction on climate change; we’d rather slowly cook than pay the price of solving the problem.
China success occurred because it is integrated into the rest of the worlds economy. Decoupling will cause all parties damage. It is as simple as that.
Australia has very limited access to the China consumer market, which in any case is stunted by comparison with other economies. The very high – incredibly high – savings rate in China is reflected in the share of investment in the economy. This is still running at about 40% of GDP. This is extraordinary. The corollary is the repression of the consumer sector. It is a feature of a command economy, in which resources are held by the State sector and marshalled for the private advantage of officials, party elites and their clients. (In this respect, China is similar to the LNP in this country.)
China has been talking of reducing the investment share of the economy/increasing the consumer share since the 1990s. It has not happened yet. The reason is the economy is run by and for the political class. This is the same class that is currently taking aim at Australian exports, that is militarising the South China Sea and that has decided the people of Hong Kong and Xinjiang are expendable.
Player One says:
Thursday, May 6, 2021 at 3:21 pm
…
Yes, and this is precisely what is worrying the US. China’s economic trajectory will see them overtake the US within just a few years – it was expected to happen by 2028, but it now looks like it may happen sooner.
China will end up like Japan; if they are lucky.
Nixko
“9 years of LNP government, yet we still have people blaming Labor for the Liberal party misusing government resources … sad, this is why the LNP win.”
Only because we have self-styled ‘progressives’ willing to go along with LNP attack lines. Greens, I’m looking at you.
frednk @ #1442 Thursday, May 6th, 2021 – 3:38 pm
You mean with a couple of cities nuked by the US? What if they are not so lucky?
A reminder.
Dutton is beating the drums of war. We must not fall for it.
That does not mean ignoring what Biden is doing. Which includes taking out the war drums beating and backing Australia as an ally.
We will choose security over trade.
Our saving grace is Biden does not want war with China. Unlike China I think the US will back Taiwan and we will have a war if it invades. It’s why Biden has not yet reversed the Trump changes regarding Taiwan.
As Dave posted China is learning again what a multilateral alliance is about. It’s feeling the pressure of power returning where there was a vacuum.
That’s the problem for Xi. He made decisions on becoming as BW puts it Emperor Xi while the US was vacant from the field.
The vacuum fooled Xi on how much scope China had to move.
Now it’s getting the backlash of the superpower returning to using its power.
The result of the Chinese overreach is a new Cold War. I am thankful that so far it’s not a hot war.
Hayne gets 5 years, 9 months:
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/jarryd-hayne-jailed-for-five-years-and-nine-months-for-sexual-assault-20210506-p57phs.html
N
China has a young population and a very vibrant export market. The rest of the world can destroy the latter. Increased consumer market means the end of cheap labor. When it starts it will be a vicious circle.
With a birth rate below 1.6 the young population is going to go.
It is going to end up like japan if they are lucky. If they are unlucky they will screw it up with military activity that pisses too many people off.
China Lashes New Zealand After It Condemns ‘Abuses’ of Uyghurs
China has criticized New Zealand after its parliament passed a motion declaring “severe human rights abuses” are taking place against Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
The motion “grossly interferes in China’s internal affairs, and runs counter to international law and basic norms governing international relations,” the Chinese embassy in Wellington said in a statement on its website. “The Chinese side deplores and firmly opposes such action.”
New Zealand has in recent years tried not to upset China — its largest trading partner. That position is becoming difficult to maintain as a spat between China and Australia, New Zealand’s closest ally, escalates.
The motion put forward by the libertarian ACT party was watered down to gain the approval of Ardern’s governing Labour Party, ACT deputy leader Brooke van Velden said.
The original version called on parliament to recognize that minorities in Xinjiang “are suffering crimes against humanity and genocide,” van Velden said.
“The British parliament had a debate about genocide,” she said. “Here in New Zealand, other parties, who had the power of veto, would not allow this debate to proceed if the motion mentioned genocide.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-06/china-lashes-new-zealand-after-it-condemns-abuses-of-uyghurs?srnd=premium-asia