Before we proceed, please note a) the post below on electoral developments in California, Canada and Germany courtesy of Adrian Beaumont, and b) the fact that tomorrow is the day of the by-election for the Northern Territory seat of Daly, where the Country Liberal Party is defending a margin of 1.2%.
Now to the week’s big item of federal election news, which is that Kristina Keneally is set to be parachuted from her current position in the Senate to the western Sydney seat of Fowler, which will be vacated with the retirement of Chris Hayes, who holds it on a 14.0% margin. The Australian reports this will be accomplished by fiat of head office, without a ballot of local party members.
Moving Keneally to the House of Representatives resolves a difficulty arising from the 2016 double dissolution, at which three of the four elected Labor Senators were allocated full terms of six years, which will expire in the middle of next year. This includes two members of the Right – Sam Dastyari, whom Kristina Keneally replaced after his resignation in February 2018, and Deborah O’Neill – and Jenny McAllister of the Left. Since factional arrangements reserve second position on the ticket for the Left, either O’Neill or Keneally faced delegation to third position, which has not been a winning proposition for Labor at a half-Senate election since 2007. As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, the power of O’Neill’s backers in the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association appears likely to secure her the top spot, although The Australian cites unidentified Keneally supporters saying she was confident of beating her.
The use of Fowler as a backstop for Keneally comes with the substantial difficulty that the electorate boasts the nation’s highest proportion of non-English speakers, in large part owing to the presence within it of the Vietnamese enclave of Cabramatta. As such, Labor appeared to have a promising successor lined up in Tu Le, a 30-year-old lawyer and daughter of Vietnamese refugees. By contrast, Keneally lives in a $1.8 million property in Sydney’s northern beaches. Le had the backing of Hayes and, according to another source cited by The Australian, would have won a rank-and-file ballot if one were held. The ABC reports senior front-bencher Tony Burke shares Hayes’ displeasure at the development, although it also notes that others in the Right felt Hayes “had no right to try to act as a kingmaker or name his replacement publicly”.
In other Labor preselection news, Tom Richardson of InDaily reports the South Australian Senate vacancy created by the death of Alex Gallacher last week is likely to be filled by Karen Grogan, national political coordinator with the United Workers Union and convenor of the state branch’s Left faction. According to the report, a Senate seat was set to pass from Right to Left in the factional deals arising from the abolition of the federal seat of Port Adelaide at the 2019 election. Gallacher’s death may have had the effect of preserving Steve Georganas’s position in the seat of Adelaide, which might otherwise have been used to create the requisite vacancy by providing a refuge for Right-aligned Senator Marielle Smith.
Also from South Australia, the Australia Institute has published a Dynata poll of state voting intention, although it was conducted back in July from a modest sample of 599. It suggests Steven Marshall’s Liberal government might struggle at the March election, recording 38% support to 34% for Labor, 10% for the Greens, 5% for SA Best and 12% for the rest.
Spot on Dubious, O’Neill and McAllister would struggle for recognition outside the most politically engaged (or their own families) After this even Tu Le is now better known than both of them.
NFL season is starting. Stands packed to capacity. Not a mask in sight.
Suck it and see, Lars.
“You mean if it were true, they’d lie/cover it up? Why are dishonest bastards allowed to run hospitals (or anything else)?”
Their job depends on spinning/lying to the public and covering up all the shit that happens. Those are the two of the main criteria for being chosen to run a public hospital (the other is meeting their budget with disguised cutbacks/reduction of services).
LVT
I would be quite happy for people to call me whatever they like on here.
steve davis says:
Sunday, September 12, 2021 at 8:05 pm
LVT
I would be quite happy for people to call me whatever they like on here.
_______________________-
What if I said you were a raging fuckwit? Would that be ok?
William Bowe says:
Sunday, September 12, 2021 at 8:03 pm
Suck it and see, Lars.
I think we only have so much personal bandwidth for this…
LVT
Fine by me. Just go for it.
I see the world’s most boring tag team is back. By the end of the night, every problem the world has ever faced will have been caused by Bill Shorten.
No, actually.
That escalated quickly! 😯
Roy O
Pay that one!!
I generally don’t go in for calling people names or swearing at people. It does seem William in recent months that has been OK for some .
I wanted to clarify the current standard.
“By the end of the night, every problem the world has ever faced will have been caused by Bill Shorten.”
***
How absurd. Everyone here knows that every problem the world has ever faced has been caused by the Greens!
You’re not allowed to call people fuckwit and dickhead and the like, though that’s not to say you’ll never get away with it. All you had to do in this instance was pick a more proportionate insult.
The website appears to be hosted in Panama, and it’s an very amateur WordPress setup.
I found a couple of complaints linked to a (probably fake) mobile number associated with phishing scams; we couldn’t figure out how to find the number behind “YourRights”.
No biggy.
Thanks for the clarification William.
What about name calling – or deliberately distorting someone’s pseudonym?
So c@tmomma -is called crankmomma -or I am called Lib Von TryHard -is that OK?
No, it’s bad. But I’m not going to do anything about it.
Lurker @ #1728 Sunday, September 12th, 2021 – 4:56 pm
You seem to be assuming that they all vote for Labor now.
So… the polls are bad? Noted.
pollbludger after dark
Dr Fumbles McStupid is the best pseudonym on here.
Has there ever been a non-lawyer selected as Shadow Attorney General? He does know how to stroke…
How bereft of talent and professionalism must the Victorian Liberals be?
In Year 9, Smith attended Rugby School in the UK. The next year, he returned to Scotch College, Melbourne, where he began competing in rowing.[4][5][2]
He attended Ormond College at the University of Melbourne, where he studied for a Bachelor of Arts in history and politics.[4] At university, he competed with Melbourne University Boat Club, representing the Victorian and Australian rowing teams.[6] At the conclusion of his rowing career he returned to the University of Melbourne, where he completed a master’s degree in international politics.[4] As part of those studies, he won a Hansard research fellowship to study at the London School of Economics.[7]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Smith_(Australian_politician)
Barney in Tanjung Bunga says:
Sunday, September 12, 2021 at 8:25 pm
Lurker @ #1728 Sunday, September 12th, 2021 – 4:56 pm
Probably Zoomster, although… Fowler’s Vietnamese constituents might take it badly. And actually punish KK by voting Liberal? It’s a risk I wouldn’t be taking if I was Albo, I mean, he had to O.K this you would think.
You seem to be assuming that they all vote for Labor now.
_________________
I admit it’s been a while since I studied politics under the revered Brian Costar at Monash, but I do seem to recall that the Vietnamese vote for Labor was one of the strongest correlations around.
Confessions @ #1731 Sunday, September 12th, 2021 – 5:19 pm
Yep, as well as Labor has done in addressing the gender imbalance, in the House of Reps many of the more marginal seats are held by women as opposed to safe seats. It’s important to have a more balance distribution across all seat types, so the balance is maintained.
@steve davis
Hey, give you 10 internet points if you can source where it came from….
Ven:
Sunday, September 12, 2021 at 5:52 pm
Mavis
[‘If you already don’t know, according to some News reports Morrison is in Sydney this weekend and will be here till next Wednesday.’]
If that’s correct he’s doubling down on his sense of entitlement, which does not surprise one iota.
__________________________________
So it appears that if you’re a resident of NSW and aged 72 or over, you’ll be triaged:
Will: ✔
AHD, not that this would cushion the blow: ✔
EPOA: ✔
Now that my affairs are in order, I feel a whole lot better. Wait a bit, Berejyklian’s friend, Arthur Moses, is reputed to be 71 – no, there’s no established correlation. There could be, however, if 72 is increased to 73, and each year thereafter commensurately.
_________________________________
Vaccine rollout:
NSW
46.2% fully vaccinated; 78.5% first dose
State target: 70%
National
42.3% fully vaccinated; 67.5% first dose
National target: 70%
Of the estimated population aged 16 and over
Really, Nath?
I was always told they voted strongly conservative because (i) they’d escaped from a communist country and (ii) Malcolm was their saviour.
Dr Fumbles
Shit !! I would have to google it. There would be some bright spark on here that would know.
@sprocket_
Au countraire, Tim Smith, UK public school, rowing 8s at Scotch, Uni Melb boat club, a grand liberal CV what is not to like? Ability, qualifications? who cares about those pedestrian qualities
Nice little test coming up for Morrison. The Brits have said they won’t be doing vaccine passports. That’s going to be interesting for getting from Britain to elsewhere in the world. We know France have been very gung ho about their passport and they seem to be a popular idea here, usual idiots excluded. When push comes to shove, will he go with his buddy Boris, or with the Australian population he is supposed to be protecting?
I suppose if the questioning gets a bit hot, they can always lasso Catherine Bennett to add her little bit of pro LNP persuasion to get the big bloke out of a spot. She was appalling on the The Project tonight. Even Hamish looked like he had the shits with her.
…quite willing to believe that the Vietnamese I knew were a skewed sample, but if so that demonstrates the danger of assuming that ethnicity determines a person’s vote.
Bushfire Bill @ #1736 Sunday, September 12th, 2021 – 7:20 pm
Hmm, let me guess, will not approve of KK replacing Albanese either. 😐
I’d always heard that Eastern Europeans voted Liberal for the same reason, but here you are zoomster.
Whatever initial attraction the Liberals had for the Vietnamese was obliterated by Howard’s Asian comments and his playing footsies with One Nation.
@steve davis
It is obscure but the PB nerds will find it, there is an element of irony there too
‘He attended Ormond College at the University of Melbourne…’
I didn’t ‘attend’ Queens College at the University of Melbourne, I stayed there.
Scrubbed a few toilets to pay for the privilege….
zoomster @ #1777 Sunday, September 12th, 2021 – 6:37 pm
That was my thinking.
If the ascension of Tim smith is anything to go by the liberals deserve to stay in their rightful place on the opposition benches in Victoria
As I said, nath, it’s a little racist to assume that one’s ethnic background determines one’s vote.
Of course, who am I to argue with PB intellects like Barney, but for what it’s worth:
Phong Nguyen is the President of the Vietnamese Community in Victoria and a former chairperson of the Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria.
He says many Vietnamese Australians entered the country as asylum seekers and are disgruntled over the tough asylum policies being adopted by the major parties during the current campaign.
Mr Nguyen says many middle aged and older Vietnamese Australians remember the debate over Pauline Hanson’s policies in the 1990s and are still reluctant to support the Coalition because of its record then on multiculturalism.
“Our community can have a long memory. The Howard era of the 1980s and Pauline Hanson and all that- it’s still fresh in people’s minds and I don’t think it has ever gone away- the whole issue of race relationships and multiculturalism- it’s very important to them.”
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/do-migrants-backgrounds-influence-their-vote
Dr F McS
It is obscure. All I can find is references to science fiction.
@zoomster
Maybe that’s the difference between attending and staying there
Cud Chewer
Bugger. Of course I should have taken photos, particularly of the document shredding truck.
Tanks for pointing this out.
But I also need to ask myself – why did I not take photos? Why did I just assume that if I posted to Pollbludger, some people more ofay with NSW health procedures would explain to me why what I was seeing was rational.
I noticed an announcement of some sort by the PM today indicating the arrival of another type of vaccine. The PM seems to have lost some of his ” I’m unassailable” bravado normally associated with his public utterances.
I was just wondering if the PM would have prior access to the results of any current polling.
I believe a Newspoll is due next week but with an election due in the next six months, I’m sure the major parties would have access to some private polling.
Can as nyone add some meat to this thought.
The existing tranche of polling has Labor in as good a position as they ever achieve.
It’s hard to imagine much further movement away from Morrison.
The Libs ran a Vietnamese candidate Andrew Nguyen in Fowler in 2013.
You know, the election Labor was wiped out in.
He suffered a 10.8% swing against him on primaries.
The Libs haven’t preselected Vietnamese candidates in the past two elections.
Perhaps there’s more to winning Fowler than being Vietnamese.
zoomster says:
Sunday, September 12, 2021 at 8:48 pm
As I said, nath, it’s a little racist to assume that one’s ethnic background determines one’s vote.
__________
My evidence was based upon an understanding of election studies conducted by academics. Your opinion was based upon a few Vietnamese who voted liberal. So I do believe that you are doing more assuming than me. Of course I won’t call you racist though. I’m classy like that.
citizen @ #1730 Sunday, September 12th, 2021 – 6:56 pm
#ScottyfromScrounging
@steve davis
LOL well done, close, very close indeed
nath
You quoted an SBS article, not an academic study.
@C@tmomma
Yaeah nah but its not a race, I remember somone saying that