Josh Butler of the New Daily reports Barnaby Joyce has “dropped hints to an election being called in January, to be held in the first quarter of next year”, while Scott Morrison apparently told the Liberal party room the election would “come around sooner than we think”. However, it appears to have been made clear that this doesn’t mean the election will be this year, consistent with Joyce’s prognosis.
Here’s what we do know, specifically regarding the parties’ recent candidate preselection efforts:
• The West Australian reports Vince Connelly, the Liberal member for the soon-to-be-abolished northern Perth seat of Stirling, will challenge fellow incumbent Ian Goodenough in the neighbouring seat of Moore, rather than pursue Labor-held Cowan as previously indicated. Goodenough is noted for his successes in recruiting members of Pentecostal churches to local party branches and featured heavily in the machinations of the factional grouping known as “The Clan”, whose extensive WhatsApp discussions have now been published in full by The West Australian. The Sunday Times reported yesterday that Connelly’s move had angered unidentified “senior” Liberals, who must be privy to polling remarkably different from any available to the public, since they appear to believe he should be able to win Cowan from Labor.
• A Liberal National Party preselection held last weekend for Dawson, which will be vacated with the retirement of George Christensen, was won by Andrew Willcox, former tomato farmer and mayor of Whitsunday. Willcox won a local party ballot ahead of Chris Bonanno, a Mackay councillor and unsuccessful candidate for the state seat of Mackay last year, and Charles Pasquale, a Burdekin farmer. Meanwhile, the Courier-Mail reports Henry Pike has been endorsed by the LNP state executive to succeed Andrew Laming as candidate for Bowman, which would appear to put to rest suggestions he might be elbowed aside despite having won the local party ballot.
• Labor has finalised candidates in several of the theoretically winnable Queensland seats currently held by the Liberal National Party: Rebecca Fanning, a Queensland government health policy adviser, in Longman (margin 3.3%); Elida Faith, local president of the Queensland Council of Unions and unsuccessful candidate in 2019, in Leichhardt (4.2%); Madonna Jarrett, a director at Deloitte Australia, in Brisbane (4.9%); Mike Denton, Australian Workers Union delegate and Caltex Lytton oil refinery worker, in Petrie (8.4%); and Rowan Holzberger, electorate officer to Senator Murray Watt, in Forde (8.6%).
• Labor also has candidates in place for the two Liberal-held seats in Tasmania, both of which it held before 2019. Bass will again be contested by Ross Hart, who held it from 2016 to 2019 and has since been the principal of a Launceston law firm, while Braddon will be contested by Chris Lynch, Burnie councillor and project co-ordinator at the St Giles Society, a charity assisting the disabled.
• Tracey Roberts, who has spent 10 years as the mayor of Wanneroo, has been endorsed as Labor’s candidate in Christian Porter’s northern Perth seat of Pearce.
• Tom Richardson of InDaily reports Louise Miller-Frost, state chief executive of the St Vincent de Paul Society, is “set to receive cross-factional support” to become Labor’s candidate for the marginal Adelaide seat of Boothby, which will be vacated with the retirement of Liberal member Nicolle Flint.
Finally, as we head into what will likely be a quiet-to-silent week on the opinion poll front, a fair and balanced selection of privately conducted polling:
• Polling on the importance of climate change as an election issue and the future use of fossil fuels, conducted for the Australian Conservation Foundation by YouGov from a sample of 15,000, has been published in the form of interactive maps by the Age/Herald. These show results at electorate level, presumably from around 100 respondents each.
• The Centre for Independent Studies has published a survey it commissioned from YouGov concerning “attitudes to a post-Covid Australia”, conducted in early August from a sample of 1029. The libertarian think tank’s take on the results, which are in line with those of a similar exercise conducted by the same pollster for The Australian last week, is that “we are a nation of ‘Karens’ tut-tutting over people not following ‘the rules’”. While it took fine parsing of small sub-samples to get there, the report observes that Coalition voters were the most likely to support “government restrictions on civil liberties because of the pandemic” in New South Wales, whereas Labor voters were markedly more so in Victoria.
Those Canberrans 70+
@covidbaseau
ACT 1st/2ndSyringe
0+
▓▓▓▓▓▒▒▒░░░░░░░ 57.42% / 38.81%
12+
▓▓▓▓▓▓▒▒▒▒░░░░░ 68.10% / 46.03%
16+
▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▒▒▒░░░░░ 72.00% / 48.66%
50+
▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▒▒▒░ 95.87% / 73.56%
70+
▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▒▒▒ 101.90% / 81.98%
poroti
That’s a rhetorical question, right? 😛
Fuck. me. Dead.
michael from Menzies house is in some doubt as to who is ‘going to win the race’ – Biden or BinChook.
News flash: Biden won that race back in July – when every American adult who wanted the vaccine had been offered the chance to take it. Every single one.
Back in July. About the same time that Morrison decided he’d better clock in for his day job for the first time since about November last year.
Shellbell
They’ve worked out the secret to having multiple firsts!
Talking about Biden , looks as though he’s firing Kelly-Anne Conway, Sean Spicer, etc.:
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/08/politics/trump-appointees-biden-boards/index.html
AE
Why isn’t Biden personally nabbing and needling people off the street? Doesn’t hold a needle?
P R Guy
BREAKING: #abc730 confirms story from earlier this week; that a disproportionately high volume of Pfizer went to Sydney. This week a number of high profile figures disputed the story, however the Operation Covid Shield has confirmed it is indeed correct. #auspol
And if there were any stubborn hangers on to flattering versions of events for the Morrison Government, Laura Tingle has just blown them out of the water. Wow.
sprocket_ says:
Thursday, September 9, 2021 at 8:00 pm
Watching Ch10 News on replay, PVO is blowing smoke up Scott’s arse…
You learn something everyday!..
When someone is “blowing smoke up your arse” today, it is a figure of speech that means that one person is complimenting another, insincerely most of the time, in order to inflate the ego of the individual being flattered.
Back in the late 1700s, however, doctors literally blew smoke up people’s rectums.
https://gizmodo.com/blowing-smoke-up-your-ass-used-to-be-literal-1578620709
Yep.
Listening to @ScottMorrisonMP flippantly dismiss his vaccine rollout failure as a fiction
This prick of a Prime Minister was FULLY VAXXED on 14 March 2021, which was 179 days ago.
He’s been fully protected for 6 months.
Whilst millions of Aussies are waiting for their 1st jab. https://t.co/gWfb0mA0ZH
“ Why isn’t Biden personally nabbing and needling people off the street? Doesn’t hold a needle?”
Delta is so infectious I’d go for a complete compulsory vaccination policy: the unvaccinated at large are a clear and present danger to our society and to my family in particular that I’d even consider channeling a bit of ole’ Joseph Stalin with the dissenters.
The Age 09/09
The release on Thursday of NSW’s exit plan, which would allow gatherings and involve retail and hospitality “cautiously” reopening to the fully vaccinated, has put pressure on Victoria to look ahead.
Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton’s team was commissioned last month to produce a Victorian lockdown exit plan. Some government figures expected the work to have been completed by now, allowing the government to create positive incentives for Victorians to get vaccinated.
Three government sources who spoke anonymously to The Age on Thursday said the delays in the release of Victoria’s plan have caused internal angst.
________________
Time for Dan to start cracking the whip.
I bet Pakula is one of the three sources. He would be getting worried about his precious Spring Carnival.
Feeling a bit foolish tonight.
Got home from a walk along the beach to find all the lights in the house were off. Wall sockets OK.
Went around to the fuse box to find one of the breakers had tripped.
Flicked it back on, expecting it to trip again. But it didn’t.
We’ve had a dud downlight that’s been flickering recently. It was flickering again tonight, so I turned it (and others on the same circuit) off. Otherwise everything was working OK.
HI and I then opened a nice bottle of Gordon’s Pink Gin, preparatory to having G&T. Grandson joined us, after arriving home from work.
After about 30 minutes I noticed a distinct smell of burning plastic. Went outside and it seemed stronger. Asked the neighbour if he could smell it too. Yes, he could. Must be some arsehole burning-off polystyrene packaging, we agreed.
Nevertheless, I sent the grandson up into the ceiling cavity, via the manhole. No smoke. No plastic smell. Insulation seems all OK.
I was still suspicious. The burning plastic smell was getting stronger, ominously: now stronger inside than outside.
Grandson went downstairs finally, smelled smoke. Went to the downstairs bathroom, opened the door and… WHAT_THE_ACTUAL_FUCK!
Black smoke was billowing out of it. He yelled up the stairs that the bathroom exhaust fan had disintegrated, the ceiling was black with soot, everything was covered in sticky plastic resudue, and he was getting the hell out ’cause he couldn’t breathe. Then the smoke alarm went off. I rushed out to the fuse box and flipped the breaker to OFF again.
House was by now in darkness. So we got out the torches, turned on the lamps (powered through the wall socket circuit). I grabbed the fire extinguisher and rushed downstairs. HI opened as many windows as pissible.
Downstairs was smoky, black, and disgusting. Grandson turned off the alarm, which gave us some time to think. I put the extinguisher down. It’s still down there somewhere.
The entire downstairs bathroom -white tiles, white floor, white walls and ceiling – was a filthy, sticky, stinking, sweet charcoal black. Interestingly, hitherto invisible spiders’ webs were all revealed in every detail: covered in a film of black, plasticky soot. Bare wires – a whole foot of insulation melted – hung out of the ceiling. The exhaust fan in the ceiling was completely gone, disintegrated, only the corner screws remaining.
A couple of hours later… The house still reeks of burning plastic. I had a look into the roof cavity where the fan used to be. It’s coated in soot, but not charred, confined to the cavity between two bearers, about a metre long (it’s a boutique bathroom). So, structurally OK, only the plastic burned. The aluminium foil conduit that the exhaust air travelled through has turned to powder. Only the spiralled wire is left. The insulation has melted or burned away. I chopped off the burnt and melted insulation and insulated the cable end. About 300mm had to go before I got to solid cable again. Having said that, it’s still an effin’ mess.
Re-build and cleanup starts tomorrow, but what I want to know is why the faulty fan tripped the breaker the first time, but not the second. My working theory is: after the breaker tripped the wiring keep smouldering, carbonizing the insulation, making it conductive. When I switched the breaker back on, the carbonized insulation conducted almost to “short circuit” level… but not quite. Thus the breaker did not trip, and so supplied enough current for the smouldering to continue, leading to a fire in the ceiling. Eventually the carbon burned, removing the near short-circuit, but the smouldering continued, self-fuelled. At least it’s a hypothesis.
Learnings from this incident:
● The fault you suspect is the problem may not actually be the problem. Check everywhere for smoke, not just upstairs.
● Probably wise to not drink pink G&T’s while you’re supposed to be troubleshooting why the breaker tripped. One job at a time.
That is all. BIG cleanup day tomorrow.
BB
Luckily its just a clean up. You could have had bona fide fire on your hands!
Andrew_Earlwood:
Thursday, September 9, 2021 at 8:04 pm
You appear to slip from pessimism to attack mode with relative ease, analogous to the dichotomy betwixt prosecution & defence; doggedness to compassion. Wearing two hats, in my experience, has its drawbacks. Much better to go down to the holding cells to tell a client, “One can’t work miracles but one did their best” than having a con hate you, some taking it personally in my experience. It’s little wonder, you’re ambivalent about Labor’s prospects, your apparent inner turmoil explicable. My stones, I’ve just realised this is a public forum – too late.
BB,
Disaster averted.
Carry on!
Wearing two hats is not a problem if you are Mundo.
“ You appear to slip from pessimism to attack mode with relative ease, analogous to the dichotomy betwixt prosecution & defence; doggedness to compassion. Wearing two hats, in my experience, has its drawbacks. Much better to go down to the holding cells to tell a client, “One can’t work miracles but one did their best” than having a con hate you, some taking it personally in my experience. It’s little wonder, you’re ambivalent about Labor’s prospects, your apparent inner turmoil explicable. My stones, I’ve just realised this is a public forum – too late.”
Lols.
1. Not pessimistic. Just realistic. My inner turmoil – as you put it, reflects that: hope for the future (my natural state of being) tempered by bitter experience. For all of that, I persevere. Worth it IMO (even The Bruce caught the English on an off day. Eventually).
2. I thought this was an anonymous forum. Oops.
Watching q&A for the first time in months – seems to be improved, and LaTrioli doing a reasonable job in the chair.
No RWNJ or IPA shills in evidence – waiting for Yanas Varoufakis appearance..
Greensborough Growler:
Thursday, September 9, 2021 at 8:39 pm
[‘Wearing two hats is not a problem if you are Mundo.’]
I’ve come to the regrettable conclusion that mungo’s a Tory, nearly all his posts pointing to same. I think Cat’s right – nearly everything’s doom & gloom. I can cop a Tory, but not a Tory dressed in Labor clothing. Sorry, mundo, you’re persona non grata for me, not due to you being a Tory; more, to you being duplicitous. I’ve known Tories on this site being less anti-Labor than you.
Funny that…..
It’s pretty wild how quickly the media went from “Dan Andrews is personally responsible for Victoria’s deadly 2nd wave” to “We need to accept people in NSW will die so we can go back to the pub”.
Mavis,
Do try and keep up.
His concern trolling has been apparent for an awful long time.
Victoria
Now Ch7 has the headline wtte
Dan Andrews under pressure to provide details of the road map out of lockdown.
Gladys setting the pace for other states according to the media.
😡
Lizzie
It is Beyond frustrating.
You’d have to be ‘Blind Freddy’ (apologies to our sight-challenged Bludgers), to not think that the Liberal Party of Scott Morrison, because it is his party now, just like the Republican Party is Trump’s party, hasn’t dedicated at least one sock puppet in Labor clothing to this blog.
I find Gaslight Gladys’s Road Map to Doom too stupid for words..
SMH…
Only regional locations that have had zero COVID-19 cases for the previous 14 days can leave lockdown before the vaccination target is met…
Is that correct, you live in a doughnut ( 14 days of them) district & you are allowed to leave…. & return with Covid you collected while out?
She has shares in coffins, only possible explanation
India has approved a new COVID-19 vaccine that uses circular strands of DNA to prime the immune system against the virus SARS-CoV-2. Researchers have welcomed news of the first DNA vaccine for people to receive approval anywhere in the world, and say many other DNA vaccines might soon be hot on its heels.
ZyCoV-D, which is administered into the skin without an injection, has been found to be 67% protective against symptomatic COVID-19 in clinical trials, and will probably start to be administered in India this month. Although the efficacy is not particularly high compared to that of many other COVID-19 vaccines, the fact that it is a DNA vaccine is significant, say researchers.
It is proof of the principle that DNA vaccines work and can help in controlling the pandemic, says Peter Richmond, a paediatric immunologist at the University of Western Australia in Perth. “This is a really important step forward in the fight to defeat COVID-19 globally, because it demonstrates that we have another class of vaccines that we can use.”
Close to a dozen DNA vaccines against COVID-19 are in clinical trials globally, and at least as many again are in earlier stages of development. DNA vaccines are also being developed for many other diseases.
“If DNA vaccines prove to be successful, this is really the future of vaccinology” because they are easy to manufacture, says Shahid Jameel, a virologist at Ashoka University in Sonipat, India.
Victoria
“This prick of a Prime Minister was FULLY VAXXED on 14 March 2021, which was 179 days ago.
He’s been fully protected for 6 months.”
You’d think that he’d be the first person to want a booster? (evil thoughts…)
Sceptic
Right from the very beginning there was a school of thought that said “flatten the curve”, which mean “you’re all gonna get it, just form an orderly queue”. These people have had their egos offended that it didn’t quite work out like that. So they conspired to make it happen.
The limo driver? Didn’t have to happen? Of course not. But Gladys wanted it (or something like it) to happen. So that the virus could become endemic and then she could enact her plan. It was the plan all along.
Right from the very beginning, certain special interest groups have hated covid zero.
I can’t wait for the truth of this to finally emerge.
Disappointed to see the QandA discussion on vaping concentrate on bastardry from Phillip-Morris in the shape of its “Heat Sticks”.
Vaping is NOT about what Phllip-Morris says vaping is. The man who asked the question bout why the clamp down on vaping is about to kick off reported the same results as myself: better breathing, high blood oxygen, lower heart rate, coughing completely elimitated, any previous sign of COPD (emphysema) wiped out… and more… in short, win-win all ’round.
And that’s not to mention the MASSIVE saving in $expense. I’m talking greater than 99 cents in the dollar.
John Saffrin tried to distinguish the Phillip-Morris scam from “genuine” vaping, but he’s a media tart at heart and joined in with the panel’s sniggering eventually.
The questioner had been a four-decade duration cigarette addict. Nothing had worked, until he tried vaping. His whole world has changed. It has been much the same for me, now down to 1% of the nicotine intake I used to use before, and ZERO combustion by- products.
I have little doubt that Morrison has either received his booster shot, or has arranged for it to be administered real soon.
To jump the queue is so typically “Morrison” as to be a virtual certainty.
The person who breaks this news will bring down the government.
BB
Is it true that vaping will be banned or is it just a restriction on selling the product? It wasn’t clear.
The only thing that worked for me was cold turkey. Bastille Day 1985. Had my last at North Sydney Oval watching the Bears beat the Bunnies. Haven’t looked back and now all sorts of smoking, vaping included, shits me to tears. Yes, I know. Nothing worse than a reformed smoker/drinker/Nazi…
https://www.pollbludger.net/2021/09/06/spring-cleaning/comment-page-50/#comment-3698660
The problem is it appears that there is a two-way street between vaping and smoking:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/09/international-research-shows-strong-evidence-linking-vaping-to-cigarette-smoking
Restricting importation to those with a prescription, which makes it much easier to restrict nicotine to people quitting smoking, seems like a reasonable measure (so long as the prescriptions can be acquired).
Bushfire Bill @ #2462 Thursday, September 9th, 2021 – 8:22 pm
Your flair for writing had raised the expection of the finding of MH370 in your attic.
The disappointment only dwarfed by the beneficial banality of the outcome.
The G&T conclusion remains suspect. 😉
vaping. Two choices, tax it or ban it. Banning works so well. No-one smoke hemp.
I wish people would stop saying this.
Vaping got me off the fags and healthy when nothing else could. I was headed for death by either lung cancer or emphysema at any time with the next ten years, with those ten years themselves years of misery and ill health.
I used to smoke 25 1mg cigarettes per day (cost today: about $58 per day). Now I vape 10 mgs of nicotine per month. That’s a 60-fold decrease in nicotine input. Plus ZERO combustion materials. Cost today: $1 per week.
I know several other men roughly my age and history who have travelled the same healthwize, moneywize beneficial journey. I have personally assisted three under-21 smokers permanently off the fags. This is in addition to the dozen ir so mature age smokers who have either given up or are still vaping, but – importantly- not smoking.
It’s the smoke that kills you, not the nicotine.
All I have seen is win-win.
https://www.pollbludger.net/2021/09/06/spring-cleaning/comment-page-50/#comment-3698675
The research indicates that there are people going the other way. Vaping is not being banned, import regulations are being tightened to require a prescription for nicotine liquid (matching domestic sales and in most cases possession regulations). Are you saying you cannot get a prescription?
BB
Morrison seems to have been also suffering from smoke coming out of his exhaust fan but just moves to a different house in a different city.
There was a kerfuffle last year about vaping.
So, I purchased what I thought was 10 years’ supply of nicotine ($100 worth, we aren’t talking a fortune here), but it turned out to be more like 50 years’ supply, as I’ve reduced my nicotine consumption since then by 4/5ths.
So I’m OK for my supplies. I doubt whether I’ll need them, as I’d be well past my telegram from the Queen (or dead, or given up) by the time I got to the bottom of the last bottle.
It’s the poor folk out there who need saving, with vaping being the transition between the fags and a smoke-free life. They’re the ones I worry about. You just can’t justify a $60 per pack, per day, habit, much less suffer the awful health consequences.
This prick of a Prime Minister was FULLY VAXXED on 14 March 2021, which was 179 days ago. He’s been fully protected for 6 months.
Do people know that you have to organise getting vaccinated yourself the State does not do it for you. Why does everyone expect the State to do everything for them, you are expected to get off your ass and get vaccinated. The issue is not that we don not have enough vaccines the issues are we are to lazy to organise to get jabbed or somehow expect the State to come in to our lounge rooms and vaccinate us, don’t want Astrazeneca, or you are an anti-vaxxer. Morrison should have just gone Astrazeneca and jabbed the whole country like the UK. People are just to precious by half. I can’t wait for a Passport it is a way to recognise the silliest of Australians.
Granted the timing was not of Berejiklian’s making but the outbreak has finally got Australia out of its slumber and on the right track to living with Covid.
You’ll have to change your name to Housefire, Bill.
Good you are all safe and the property damage is limited. To keep it that way, don’t dick about with the wiring again and get a pro to check it is properly isolated tomorrow.
https://www.pollbludger.net/2021/09/06/spring-cleaning/comment-page-50/#comment-3698682
A personal anecdote about preparing for import restrictions does not constitute an answer about prescription access.
Steelydan @ #2489 Thursday, September 9th, 2021 – 10:54 pm
Pandemic management failure #42,069.
Maybe because the State has all the vaccines, and is in control of the vaccine rollout plan, and knows everyone’s demographic and contact details, and when vaccines will be available where.
If they can spam everyone’s mobile with campaign messaging, they can send everyone a link for scheduling their vaccination.
But nah, that would make too much sense. Might even make the government look marginally competent. Can’t have that.
Tom, with great respect, you’re being an arse. It’s all the answer you’re going to to get.
Off to do my bit to make the world a bit greener tomorrow…
(applying green paint to the water tank) 🙂
a r
Did you catch my musings a couple days ago regarding where I think we will end up with covid and why “everyone is going to get it” probably isn’t going to happen.
“Might even make the government look marginally competent”
Now, that would make the Liberal apologists’ heads explode 🙂
A charming rendition of this aria from Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwV7gZO_pnI
It was of course Donizetti who vicariously made Sutherland famous in the role of Lucia.
Cud Chewer @ #2495 Thursday, September 9th, 2021 – 11:27 pm
Yes, I had a thing about that awhile ago:
a r @ #1318 Wednesday, September 8th, 2021 – 9:20 am
a r
Ah cool. I think I missed your reply earlier. The thing about UK is that they’ve already seen 20-30 percent of the population infected and thus (according to the latest study) carrying strong immunity. This might explain why, despite the present cases numbers, the case fatality rate is down around 0.3%.
The UK health system is near limit. Dig into the local media and you’ll find stories about staff resignations, cancellation of other medical care and so on. So you gotta ask the question, how sustainable is it?
Of course the likes of Gladys will be hoping that the cost of covid in terms of ICU beds, resources etc, per case, will go down over time as over-50s pass 85%. That in turn will allow them to crank up the rate of cases to suit. But I’m still not convinced even this will result in “everyone getting it” in a meaningful period of time. Wanna help me with the math?