Crying Fowler

A plan to move Kristina Keneally from the Senate to the western Sydney seat of Fowler looks set to solve one problem for Labor while creating another. Also featured: a Senate vacancy and a state poll from South Australia.

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.

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.

1,894 comments on “Crying Fowler”

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  2. Albury Wodonga midwifery Service is Wodonga based

    NSW Health had centred birthing services at St John which had a few unfortunate deliveries so that closed and babies were all delivered at Wodonga

    Good to hear Albury Base is once again delivering babies

  3. jt1983
    It’s not “the bubble’ you have to worry about it is the 2GBs and Daily Telegraphs. It won’t matter how ‘old news’ it is or how often claims have been debunked they’ll run the lies anyway and present it as if it is ‘current affairs’.


  4. a r says:
    Friday, September 10, 2021 at 10:18 am

    TPOF @ #149 Friday, September 10th, 2021 – 10:16 am

    If Labor are to win the next election, it won’t be in NSW.

    Why? Morrison’s incompetence hits everyone, everywhere. Gladys’s does/will do the same, but has hit NSW especially hard.

    Last election was lost in WA and Queensland.

  5. Perhaps we should establish an annual Bronwyn Bishop Medal for the greatest sense of entitlement in Australian politics.

    There would be many worthy nominees, not least Scomo and his secret father’s day dashes home at taxpayer expense.

    Yet this Perth Liberal, Phil Edelman, is surely a strong candidate to take home a “Bronny”.
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-08/phil-edman-mp-expense-scandal-laptop/100444732

    Cat

    I didn’t retire moving to Adelaide. I have had to travel a lot for work in the past decade, but since Covid that has stopped, while my interstate work hasn’t. I love Zoom 🙂

  6. Kristina Keneally
    I have always made the choice to step up and fight.

    That’s why I’m making the choice now to seek preselection in Fowler – I want to step up & fight for Fowler in the House of Reps, for every suburb, every faith community, every small business, every family.

    My statement https://t.co/V0VidCRRCR


  7. billie says:
    Friday, September 10, 2021 at 10:20 am

    Albury Wodonga midwifery Service is Wodonga based

    NSW Health had centred birthing services at St John which had a few unfortunate deliveries so that closed and babies were all delivered at Wodonga
    …

    So the glorious NSW hospital system OC was going on about had to call on Victoria to fix up one of their messes. Perhaps paying managers excessive salaries may not be a perfect solution.

  8. Roy

    See there you go. Painting me as a Green.
    For that to have any effect I would have to be a member of a political party.

    You see malice. It’s not there.

    Hyper partisanship types are seeing an attack when there is not one.
    It was an observation where the only political conclusion I have commented on is that I don’t think it’s the wrong one for Labor.

    I see a problem. I did not at any point say Labor should not have done it. I just said how it looks from outside. I said what I expect the attacks from the LNP will be.

    That’s it. You see malice that is not there.

  9. billiesays:
    Friday, September 10, 2021 at 9:16 am
    Not sure which idiots are demanding that Victorian Chief Health Officer publish a plan for getting out of lockdown when the projected peak is 6 weeks away when there will be 18,000 active cases (2,000 cases active now). They are not helpful!
    ________________
    Just to be clear.
    You are referring to the 3 Andrews govt MP’s that are leaking to the media.
    But i agree. Not helpful at all.

  10. Just a thought.

    The emphasis has turned to vaccination and ‘freedom’, pushed most enthusiastically by Gladys.

    30% of Victoria is double vaxxed. 55% has at least one dose.
    Are we seeing an additional lack of compliance from those who are vaxxed but decided they are safe now? Vaccinated folk can be Rona positive and contagious yet very asymptomatic.

  11. a r says:
    Friday, September 10, 2021 at 10:18 am
    TPOF @ #149 Friday, September 10th, 2021 – 10:16 am

    If Labor are to win the next election, it won’t be in NSW.
    Why? Morrison’s incompetence hits everyone, everywhere. Gladys’s does/will do the same, but has hit NSW especially hard.

    __________________________________

    Didn’t mean to be so cryptic. What I meant to say is that if the national government handling of the pandemic is to translate into a rejection of that government, then every other state will be ahead of NSW in the queue to vote them out. In NSW there is still some residual affection for Glad Tidings (not that I understand why!).

  13. From the article Jaeger linked to.

    Alberta’s plan to lift all pandemic restrictions and precautions appears to have been based on a scenario rooted more in wishful optimism and political expediency than obvious scientific evidence, say experts in infectious diseases and pandemic modelling.

    But they say the problem was compounded as Premier Jason Kenney and Dr. Deena Hinshaw, the chief medical officer of health, failed to reimpose measures despite the steady rise of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations through the summer.

    Did the Coalition borrow Alberta’s script?

    Some of the things Berejiklian has said today demonstrate some sense, so hopefully not :P.

    According to Kenney and Hinshaw, the moves were based on data from the United Kingdom showing that high vaccination rates had “decoupled” infections from severe outcomes, which in turn had resulted in much lower rates of hospitalization.

    Alberta to remove most COVID-19 isolation, testing requirements by mid-August
    But both Schwartz and Dean Karlen, a physics professor and expert in modelling at the University of Victoria, said Alberta’s reliance on the U.K. experience made little sense.

    …

    “You really should be looking at multiple jurisdictions.”

    Aha, so it’s actually the UK script the Coalition appeared to be borrowing.

  15. I don’t think it’s likely the swing that changes Government will happen in NSW… but it’s where a swing to protect the Government would need to happen. If there is no swing or only a mild swing in NSW, it probably means the Libs have lost.


  16. How to sign a farewell card for a colleague that you despise

    A person at work is leaving after a very long time. I have worked with them for years and have never got on with them. In fact, I would go so far as to say I have a deep-seated dislike of them.

    In the age. “them” is now singular. Take that language natzi’s.

  19. I smell a setup.

    Chant is about to sacrifice her professional position so Gladys can duck the blame. Chant should realise Gladys is the sort of ratbag who would have dobbed you in for having a smoke behind the school bike shed.

    For her part, Chant refused to say she was happy with the plan, but she did describe it as “cautious”.

    There have been reports she wanted to wait until 80% of adults were fully vaccinated and that vaccines were more available to children. Chant did not confirm this but she said the state will reach a single-dose rate of 80% next Monday or Tuesday, pointing to the 80% double-dose target being achievable.

    Chant has also been given the power to declare any need to backtrack on the reopening. Both she and Berejiklian were not specific about what would trigger a reversal of the recovery roadmap.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/09/the-nsw-roadmap-is-uncharted-territory-a-covid-experiment-pitting-the-vaccinated-against-the-rest

  20. The abc claims that Morrison has been wedged on AGW by the US and the Nats (or Biden and Barnaby).

    That’s an incorrect and harmful framing of what’s going on. He’s been wedged (assuming he really does want to change position, that is) by the Coalition’s own decade long harmful and destructive trashing of objective/rational discussion and debate, of which Mr Joyce’s entrenched commitment to inaction is merely a symptom. Morrison is not some helpless victim, poor him. He was (and still is) an active part of that.

    Australians, and the msm in particular, should not have grown used to accepting/admiring the Coalition’s destructive tactics/strategy as an “effective” way to play the game or merely something to be expected. What a low bar to pass. We deserve better from the so-called “fourth estate”.

  21. My last comment on these accusations.

    If I wanted Labor to lose I would have pointed out the problems. Crowed it’s too late to fix them now and in the bargain have done it all before the choice was made to create maximum damage by amplifying division within Labors pre selection process.

    Not making a one paragraph comment after the choice has been made.

    So people do get a grip

  22. “Chant has also been given the power to declare any need to backtrack on the reopening. Both she and Berejiklian were not specific about what would trigger a reversal of the recovery roadmap.”

    Going to be extremely difficult to pull on the reins with everyone’s expectations raised.

  23. The Republican National Committee (RNC) has vowed to sue the Biden administration over its COVID-19 vaccine and testing mandate.

    “Joe Biden told Americans when he was elected that he would not impose vaccine mandates. He lied. Now small businesses, workers, and families across the country will pay the price. Like many Americans, I am pro-vaccine and anti-mandate,” RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement on Thursday

    “Many small businesses and workers do not have the money or legal resources to fight Biden’s unconstitutional actions and authoritarian decrees,” she continued, “but when his decree goes into effect, the RNC will sue the administration to protect Americans and their liberties.”

    McDaniel also took to Twitter, calling out President Biden’s approach to the ongoing pandemic in a series of tweets.

  24. @4Mambotweets

    This is ugly partisan politics. From a state where people are dying every day and hospitals are jammed a fool politician pokes fun at the leader of a state where no-one is dying and hospitals are running normally. Such is the politcal sickness of Covid politics.

  25. Now small businesses, workers, and families across the country will pay the price.

    Pay the price of not getting sick with covid? Not clear where they think they’re going with this.

  26. Increase in lack of compliance of health measures in Melbourne is caused by

    1. Gladys & Scotty boasting NSW is opening up
    2. ABC using cafe owners who were probably stealing their workers wages as epidemiologists every news broadcast
    3. ABC broadcasting whinging Liberal organisers stuck in Albury anxious to return to Port Fairy before election is called
    4. pissy articles in The Age
    5. hostile anti-Dan front pages in The Herald Sun
    6. tiredness
    7. shitty weather – windy cold and sometimes glorious
    8. despair that Delta variant attacks kids and there is no vaccine

    We definitely are not all in this together any more! At least a third were not wearing masks properly near me. I believe its 5% non-compliance in northern and eastern suburbs

  28. One of the more disturbing comments about the NSW Road Map, bordering on sinister, was Gladys saying yesterday, to her “citizens”, and I quote:

    “you have been warned”

    You get sick, you go to hospital, you go to intensive care, you die, then be it upon you. And only you. While to me it’s of little surprise coming from someone with patently little insight into the human condition, it should be ringing a lot of alarm bells about the prospective dissociation of those responsible for the situation people find themselves in from their consequences.

    Long story short – blame shifting.

  30. A few observations on Keneally and Fowler:
    1. She doesn’t live in the electorate, Scotland Island is 30km from South West Sydney
    2. Keneally has no connection at all to local issues in the electorate, nor any relationship whatsoever with the Vietnamese and Assyrian communities.
    3. Once again, head office is imposing a candidate on a seat and depriving branch members of any say in the preselection.
    4. The young lady who Chris Hayes endorsed seems very capable to me, and in the long run would make an excellent contribution to the ALP. I presume she’ll be told by Bob Nanver and co to wait her turn, and run in a council election or something like that instead.
    5. Keneally’s supposed star power and worth to the federal ALP and NSW branch is greatly overstated, in my opinion. For example, I never noticed her lay a glove on Dutton when she was shadowing him.
    6. The perception is that Keneally always has favours done for her by Head Office, and when she did run in a marginal seat(Bennelong), she hardly set the world on fire.
    7. Fairly or unfairly, she will always have the taint of Obeid and Tripodi attached to her.

    OK, Fowler is a safe ALP seat, so no doubt Keneally would retain it for Labor comfortably, then again I can’t help think wondering that the ALP might need to shift resources into Fowler for the reasons I enunciated above, resources that really should be going into seats like Lindsay and Banks. Greg Rudd makes a good point about this in his post earlier in this thread.

  31. Every time Morrision goes out there and claims that Australia is somehow leading the way on AGW, and that we can keep growing carbon emitting industries, he is feeding Australians misinformation and conditioning them to believe that our current trajectory is sustainable.

    That’s not benign political positioning free of side effects. It comes at the cost of entrenching inaction, and entrenching opposition to action – even action he might eventually advocate for, if we are to believe the msm that he’s changing his spots.

  32. @Vic_Rollison
    ·
    14m
    Oh wow. ABC’s home of anti-lockdown coverage –
    @abc730 – are framing NSW govt’s dangerous decision to go against expert advice and open at 70% a relief for ‘exhausted’ citizens. I have no doubt people are tired. It’s been horrible. BUT death is infinitely worse than exhaustion.

  34. Jaeger @ #179 Friday, September 10th, 2021 – 10:50 am

    Upside down rhinos and nose-clearing orgasm studies win Ig Nobel prize

    Research from the more unusual realms of science is recognised every year at this alternative awards ceremony

    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/sep/09/upside-down-rhinos-and-nose-clearing-orgasm-studies-win-ig-nobel-prize

    Brilliant article. It’s been long held that there are two physiological processes that are impossible to abort once past a certain point – and one of them is sneezing.

    One of the best guys I ever worked with pioneered lifting drowning people out of the sea horizontally, not vertically, where the blood stayed in the lower limbs, at the expense of the brain, and you kept on drowning as your lungs kept filling up.

  39. NSW Health has released some detail about the nine people who died and had Covid-19

    A man in his 60s from western Sydney died at home.
    A man in his 70s from south-eastern Sydney died at Prince of Wales Hospital.
    A woman in her 40s from south-western Sydney died at Liverpool Hospital.
    A man in his 70s from Sydney’s southern suburbs died at home.
    A woman in her 50s from the Central Coast died at Gosford Hospital.
    A man in his 60s from western Sydney died at Royal North Shore Hospital.
    A woman in her 80s from western Sydney died at Ryde Hospital.
    A man in his 30s from Nepean Blue Mountains died at Nepean Hospital.
    A man in his 50s from south-western Sydney died in Liverpool Hospital.

  40. @RohanLeppert tweets

    Council has partnered with @co_ground to provide coffees and food to people experiencing homelessness, international students, and vulnerable Melburnians accessing the cohealth Melbourne Town Hall vax hub. Every member of our community is important.

  41. @NeilMcMahon
    ·
    2m
    Thought this would happen. No more daily NSW pressers with @GladysB or Hazzard after Sunday.

    She’s forecasting a “peak” but doesn’t want to be connected with the figures.

  44. @Paul_Karp tweets

    I would say there is a need every day to ask our political leaders how actual case numbers, hospitalisations and deaths are tracking against models – and whether the reopening is going to plan.
    #auspol #COVID19nsw #COVID19Aus
    twitter.com/michaelkoziol/…

    @michaelkoziol tweets

    NSW is ending the daily COVID-19 press conference. Updates will be delivered by video from NSW Health. Berejiklian or Hazzard will hold pressers “on a needs basis”.

  46. Record 1542 cases
    Over 1,000 hospitalised
    207 in ICU
    89 on ventilators

    I can see why GladysB won’t be having any more press conferences. Daily ToiletPaper will shift the reporting to p17.

  50. I can’t listen to Gladys. At the beginning I used to try, but even though I am what is called a “native English speaker” her sentences often make no sense to me, or are so hedged about with qualifications as to be meaningless. I cannot imagine that any of the families in the “LGAs of concern” bother trying to listen.

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