A preselection, two redistributions and a by-election

An assemblage of random stuff to kick off the new week.

It being the mid-point of the year, we’re about due for Newspoll’s state and demographic aggregates and Essential Research’s dump of voting intention numbers, both of which come along quarterly. In the meantime, there’s the following:

• The Queensland Liberal National Party’s preselection for a successor to Andrew Laming in Bowman has been won by Henry Pike, media and communications director for the Property Council. Pike was the only male candidate in a field of five, and prevailed despite earlier urgings from the Prime Minister for a woman to be preselected. Madura McCormack of the Courier-Mail reports he won in the final round of the ballot of local preselectors with 107 votes against 88 for Maggie Forrest, a barrister. Pike said last week that comments he made on the subject of “f***ing a fat chick” in a group chat twelve years ago, when he was about 21, do not “reflect the person I’ve grown to be”.

• Antony Green has published a report calculating party vote shares for the draft state redistribution in Victoria. Finalised state boundaries for New South Wales will be along at some unspecified point in the probably not too distant future.

• I have published a guide to the by-election for the Queensland state seat of Stretton, to be held on July 24 to choose a successor to Labor member Duncan Pegg, who resigned in April due to ill health and died on June 10.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,143 comments on “A preselection, two redistributions and a by-election”

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  1. On Pfizergate and the St Joseph’s Year 12 vaccination, if indigenous students were the concern, why not just vaccinate them? (Reportedly 4% of the school population). And in that case, why not vaccinate the indigenous kids at Mt Druit or Dubbo, no doubt more numerous. And of elite schools, why that one?

    The cynic in me wants to know how many Liberal MPs send their boys to that school? The catholic Liberal faction in NSW is almost as numerous as the pentecostals.

  2. As Rex says on Pfizergate and St Joseph’s, how can it be an error? The school reportedly has 4% indigenous students, out of 1000. That would be 40 in total, perhaps 6 to 8 in Year 12.

    How did NSW health magically have enough Pfizer doses on hand to vaccinate the whole class of 160 students when they were bussed there? How did this happen twice (for both doses).

    Who decided to vaccinate the school? Brad Hazzard? I ask again, which MP has sons at the school.

  3. Socrates says:
    Tuesday, July 6, 2021 at 7:00 pm

    As Rex says on Pfizergate and St Joseph’s, how can it be an error? The school reportedly has 4% indigenous students, out of 1000. That would be 40 in total, perhaps 6 to 8 in Year 12
    ___________
    I can see this happening quite easily. The school gets permission to send it’s Indigenous students to get vaccinations, they send the whole year 12 cohort for some reason and the people doing the vaccinations are in the business of giving vaccinations, so they just did the lot.

  4. Rex Douglas @ #1001 Tuesday, July 6th, 2021 – 6:51 pm

    Oakeshott Country @ #990 Tuesday, July 6th, 2021 – 6:24 pm

    Nsw Health now admitting it was an error to vaccinate school boys
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-06/covid-live-updates-coronavirus-aged-care-staff-vaccination/100269222#live-blog-post-1201953698

    Only the indigenous pupils were meant to be vaccinated

    Is that the best they could come up with ?

    I’m thinking. Someone in a position of authority should have known that. Someone at the school ordered the bus. Someone agreed to put all of Year 12 on the bus and send them to be vaccinated. Who were they?

  5. I’m not overly critical of the School in this situation.

    As Stevie Winwood once said,

    “If you see a chance take it.
    Find vaccine fake it”.

    Bullshitting is an Australian characteristic.

  6. Wildfire that decimated B.C. town was likely human-caused, says official – Wildfire service says Lytton fire is still under investigation

    The B.C. Wildfire Service says the fire that burned through Lytton, B.C., last week, resulting in two deaths, was likely human-caused.

    Fire information officer Erika Berg said Sunday the wildfire service suspects the fire came from within the Village of Lytton.

    “The specific cause of the Lytton Creek wildfire remains under investigation by both the RCMP as well as our fire origin cause investigators,” Berg said.

    “It is suspected to be human-caused, but that specific cause remains to be determined.”

    The fire is currently under the jurisdiction of the Lytton fire brigade, she said.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/lytton-fire-likely-human-caused-1.6089991

  7. C@t

    Earlier on Tuesday, the St Joseph’s College principal, Ross Tarlinton, said: “The college approached Sydney Local Health District in May 2021 to inquire about the possibility of vaccinations for students, given that we have a large number of boys who live in a residential community, which includes boys from rural, remote and Indigenous communities.”

    All Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people aged 16 and over are eligible for the Pfizer vaccine.

    “The approval and administration of the vaccine was endorsed and managed by NSW Health through the Sydney Local Health District,” Tarlinton said. “The college proceeded to make arrangements for the administration of the approved vaccine at a centre determined by NSW Health.

    (guardian)

  8. ‘alfred venison says:
    Tuesday, July 6, 2021 at 7:03 pm

    Wildfire that decimated B.C. town was likely human-caused, says official – Wildfire service says Lytton fire is still under investigation’
    ___________________________________
    That was my first thought, FWIW.

    In the larger sense it was also human caused – global warming has been a species-wide effort.

  9. Further on Pfizergate, Xanthippe raised a few usful points:
    – Pfizer cannot be given to anyone under 16 yet, so this was probably every student in the school who could have legally received it.
    – For minors, written parental consent would have been required for every student. So this must have been planned days or weeks in advance.
    – a single Pfizer vial can dose 6 patients. So there is no way you could just happen to have spare the 27 vials you would need to dose 160 teenage boys. Twice. Every vial is numbered and accounted for, for tracking of adverse events. PLus cold chain storage must be certified for Pfizer

    So this was no accident. There would have had to have been two way communication between school and health department over days or weeks before. (Same with chartering the buses).

    This was about as accidental as the losing of the Porter rape allegations.

  10. I don’t think there would be many Liberal MPs who send their sons to St Joseph’s. Its main catchment are boys in the country with a good step.

    It’s not exactly an intellectual powerhouse either

  11. ItzaDream @ #1010 Tuesday, July 6th, 2021 – 7:06 pm

    C@t

    Earlier on Tuesday, the St Joseph’s College principal, Ross Tarlinton, said: “The college approached Sydney Local Health District in May 2021 to inquire about the possibility of vaccinations for students, given that we have a large number of boys who live in a residential community, which includes boys from rural, remote and Indigenous communities.”

    All Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people aged 16 and over are eligible for the Pfizer vaccine.

    “The approval and administration of the vaccine was endorsed and managed by NSW Health through the Sydney Local Health District,” Tarlinton said. “The college proceeded to make arrangements for the administration of the approved vaccine at a centre determined by NSW Health.

    (guardian)

    Don’t all our Year 12 kids live in ‘residential communities’? I know they mean boarding dorms but all Year 12 are in close contact every day with their peers at school, so why should a bunch of Private School kids get favourable treatment?

    Also I thought Rural and Remote areas had the lowest levels of COVID-19, so why give them vaccines preferentially?

    Look, my son was in cohort 1a. He’s still waiting for HIS Pfizer injection.

  12. Recon
    “ I can see this happening quite easily. The school gets permission to send it’s Indigenous students to get vaccinations, they send the whole year 12 cohort for some reason and the people doing the vaccinations are in the business of giving vaccinations, so they just did the lot.”

    For the reasons I just posted, this is not possible. Every vaccine dose is numbered and accounted for, and vaccinations are booked in advance. No clinic has 160 doses of spare Pfizer floating around (worth $6500). If they did they would have vaccinated all their nursing staff first.

    Somebody made a decision to allocate a very scarce vaccine to that school contrary to policy and somebody organised all the details.

    I ask again, which Liberal MP has a son at St Joseph’s?

    Cat

    You are right about the indigenous angle too. Of all the indigenous teenagers in NSW, the borders at St Joeys are probably the safest and least risk. Last priority for vaccination compared to thousands in the western suburbs.

  13. boerwarsays:
    Tuesday, July 6, 2021 at 7:09 pm
    ‘alfred venison says:
    Tuesday, July 6, 2021 at 7:03 pm

    Wildfire that decimated B.C. town was likely human-caused, says official – Wildfire service says Lytton fire is still under investigation’
    ___________________________________
    That was my first thought, FWIW.

    In the larger sense it was also human caused – global warming has been a species-wide effort.
    —-
    well, yer a more astuter man than me, kimosabe. somebody’s facing murder charges. and, yes, a chain of two (2) human causes.-a.v.

  14. Shellbell, St Joeys has always been a Rugby boarding school for country yokels, with a few scholarships for Aboriginals – your Kurtley Beale video brings back memories of watching him win the GPS competition virtually on his own – I think he had a back rower who helped.

    So I looked at the Alumni looking for a patron for this outrage – no Perottet (Hills Christian) or Hazzard (Manly Public) and the closest Federal pollies were Craig Laundy and Bill Heffernan.

    But Murray Gleeson is an alumni, so maybe he swung something…

  15. England have been forced to select a new team for the Pakistan ODI series after the whole squad went into isolation due to seven COVID cases.

    Three players and four members of the management team tested positive after taking PCR tests.

  16. The Joeys vaccine scandal is all through the media including Murdoch’s Oz. Gladys and her team will have to spend time dealing with this when they should be totally focussed on the spread of the infection in Sydney.

  17. Well you never know. The QlD Premier got the Pfizer because she wanted to go to the Olympics. Anything is possible.

  18. Recon says:
    Tuesday, July 6, 2021 at 7:25 pm
    Well you never know. The QlD Premier got the Pfizer because she wanted to go to the Olympics. Anything is possible.
    ____________________
    Imagine if the NSW ALP had control of Pfizer stocks.

    Mates would get priority , then what was left over would be auctioned off to the highest fundraising contributor.

  19. beguiledagain:

    Tuesday, July 6, 2021 at 11:38 am

    Thanks for your most interesting and informative post on Whitlam and your part in his visit to China.

    I’d make a few points. First, Gough’s response that he went to China for more than merely selling Australian wheat was so typical of the man’s brashness but more so his vision. Why would you indeed ignore a quarter of the world’s people?

    Second, at the time of his visit, he was merely the LOTO, making overtures abroad was up until then the lot of the Government. I recall at the time, that given the fear of the so-called “Yellow Peril”, he was making a potentially huge political mistake, doubting like most that he would’ve led Labor to government in ’72. But of course that all changed when Kissinger visited China shortly after the Australian delegation left for home, paving the way for Nixon’s visit in ’72, Hayden saying of the visit that it was turned from “a disaster in the making” into “a stroke of genius.” Whereas, McMahon counted with, knowing he had been trumped, “In no time at all Zhou Enlai had Mr. Whitlam on a hook and he played him as a fisherman plays a trout.” He could have not been more wrong.

    Third, whereas our relations with China are now based on megaphone diplomacy – both sides being responsible in varying degrees – the diplomacy of the time emanated, as you say, from ping pong, following the world championships held in Japan, where a US and Chinese player formed a friendship.

    Fourth, although Kissinger’s visit was shrouded in secrecy, I wonder whether Whitlam had any prior knowledge? My understanding of the geopolitics of the time is that Nixon wanted to improve relations with China so as to act as a foil to the USSR. I guess we’ll never know if Gough was forewarned and if he wasn’t, as appears to be the case, his visit must go down in the annals of this country as the most audacious political gamble ever. Anyway, thanks again for your post.

  20. Lars Von Trier @ #1026 Tuesday, July 6th, 2021 – 7:29 pm

    Recon says:
    Tuesday, July 6, 2021 at 7:25 pm
    Well you never know. The QlD Premier got the Pfizer because she wanted to go to the Olympics. Anything is possible.
    ____________________
    Imagine if the NSW ALP had control of Pfizer stocks.

    Mates would get priority , then what was left over would be auctioned off to the highest fundraising contributor.

    You two are F.I.T.H.

  21. “they send the whole year 12 cohort for some reason”

    What a stupid comment. Do you play rugby league for St George? Or worse still, are you ScrotumHead’s ethics adviser?

  22. Lars Von Trier says:

    Mates would get priority , then what was left over would be auctioned off to the highest fundraising contributor.
    __________________
    Instead of GP’s or Vaccination centers you go to your local Chinese restaurant with 5k cash.

  23. Lib von Tryhard – that pre-selection rejection must burn in your craw.

    But you could console yourself within the knowledge that the preselection were right..

  24. Lars

    Labor, let alone State have any control of the vaccine roll out so pure hyperbole on your, part as usual.

  25. “Mates would get priority , then what was left over would be auctioned off to the highest fundraising contributor.”

    Hey Knobhead, why not get a job hanging ScrotumHead’s wallpaper.

  26. Hey Sprocket, spill the beans on the Tory poster’s pre-selection failure. Didn’t he do enough fat-shaming? Or take enough photos of shop assistants bending over? Or cum on enough desks?

  27. The Home Builder scheme has hyped the whole industry to the point you can’t get building materials, did the dumb arsed Gov ever consider that or just a sugar hit to the industry. Costs are now passing onto those who can least afford it, the end user.

  28. If only the ALP were in charge of the vaccination program! It’s no coincidence that the Labor states have performed much better in the Covid response.

    In Liberal Land inertia and blame shifting are the standard policy response settings.

  29. Re nursing. My mother and her best friend for life did nursing training at St Vincents, Darlinghurst in the 1930s. On completing her training she and her friend decided to go to London and nurse there. She arrived around Sept 15, 1939 after a submarine scare in the Bay of Biscay. She remained in London and was there to treat refugees from Dunkirk, victims of the Blitz and many sailors picked up at sea by passing vessels after having their ships sunk from under them. She later joined the Australian Army Nurses and went to Cairo and Jerusalem before making her way back to Australia and Port Moresby and finished the war in Manila at an American hospital.
    She had no interest in overseas travel in later life.

  30. Great wording here. The jabbers were so enthusiastic that they couldn’t stop at 5 or 6 but kept going until 16o of their mates were done too. How does one ‘accidentally’ jab 160 people?

    NSW Health says it gave Pfizer jab to more than 160 students ‘in error’

    NSW Health said it only meant to give Pfizer jabs to a handful of Indigenous students at St Joseph’s College but accidentally inoculated 163 HSC students.
    (SMH headline)

  31. In the mid 80s I got to know Whitlam somewhat when he was Amb to UNESCO in Paris. At a function one night I bluntly asked him if he had foreknowledge of the Kissinger/ Nixonvisit to China. His reply was something along the lines of “definitely not, Comrade!”, but there might have been a smile inhis eyes.

  32. Recon says:
    Tuesday, July 6, 2021 at 7:31 pm
    Lars Von Trier says:

    Mates would get priority , then what was left over would be auctioned off to the highest fundraising contributor.
    __________________
    Instead of GP’s or Vaccination centers you go to your local Chinese restaurant with 5k cash.
    ______________________________
    And for 15K you can get a whole family of four done – provided you were also prepared to sign up to your local branch.

  33. Cut snake
    Did she do time in an Australian army base hospital?
    (Many of the AANS got a break in Australia at them between o/s deployments)

  34. Cut Snake:

    Tuesday, July 6, 2021 at 7:52 pm

    [‘His reply was something along the lines of “definitely not, Comrade!”, but there might have been a smile inhis eyes.’]

    I hope for prosperity that truth never comes out, but have always thought that there might be a skerrick of veracity in it.

  35. Cut Snake says:
    Tuesday, July 6, 2021 at 7:52 pm
    In the mid 80s I got to know Whitlam somewhat when he was Amb to UNESCO in Paris. At a function one night I bluntly asked him if he had foreknowledge of the Kissinger/ Nixonvisit to China. His reply was something along the lines of “definitely not, Comrade!”, but there might have been a smile inhis eyes.
    __________________________
    Sprockets has a marvellous story about how he had a photo with the Great Man (aged 86) at a fundraiser with only 2 other Labor hacks in the photo. The Great Man has a vacant expression – Id describe it as not unlike a gent wishing to be expressionless at the urinal! It (the photo) is one of sprockets most prized possessions!

  36. Do people really think NSW purposely vaccinated the school children because they came from a private school. Get a grip it was a stuff up pure and simple, you mob a borderline conspiracy theorists. Anyone on here who does has gone the full loon and beyond redemption.

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