This coming Monday is the last date on which an election can be called for this year, specifically for the December 11 date spruiked recently by Anthony Albanese, which few if any still expect. The parlour game thus seems likely to move on now to the alternative scenarios of March and May. A complication in the former case is a South Australian state election set in the normal course of events for the third Saturday in March, i.e. March 19. If I understand the situation correctly, the South Australian government will have the discretion to delay the election by up to three weeks if a federal election is called before February 19 for a date in March.
Here’s what we do know:
• Max Maddison of The Australian reports grumbling within the New South Wales Liberal Party over its failure to have finalised candidates in the important seats of Dobell, Warringah and Gilmore. The report cites Liberal sources, no doubt with an interest in the matter, accusing Alex Hawke of using his clout on state executive to delay proceedings to the advantage of candidates of his centre right faction. “Other senior Liberal sources” contend the problem is “a lack of quality candidates and impending local government elections”. Prospective nominees for Dobell include former test cricketer Nathan Bracken, along with Michael Feneley, a cardiologist who has twice run unsuccessfully in Kingsford Smith, and Jemima Gleeson, owner of a chain of coffee shops.
• Further on Gilmore, the ever-readable Niki Savva reported in her Age/Herald column a fortnight ago that “speculation is rife” that Andrew Constance will not in fact proceed with his bid for preselection, just as he withdrew from contention Eden-Monaro ahead of last year’s by-election. If so, that would seemingly leave the path clear for Shoalhaven Heads lawyer Paul Ell, who is reckoned a formidable opponent to Constance in any case.
• Labor has not been breaking its back to get candidates in place in New South Wales either, with still no sign of progress in the crucial western Sydney fringe seat of Lindsay. However, candidates have recently been confirmed in two Liberal marginals: Zhi Soon, an education policy adviser and former diplomat, in Banks, and Sally Sitou, a University of Sydney doctoral candidate and one-time ministerial staffer, in Reid.
• In Victoria, Labor’s candidate in La Trobe will be Abhimanyu Kumar, owner of a local home building company.
• In an article by Jason Campbell of the Herald Sun, JWS Research says rising poll numbers for Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party are being driven by “skilled labourers and lower-end middle-management”, supplementing an existing support base that had largely been limited to people over 65. Maleness and low education remain common threads.
• An article on the voter identification laws by Graeme Orr of the University of Queensland in The Conversation makes a point I had not previously heard noted: that those who lodge a declaration vote in lieu of providing identification will have no way of knowing if their vote was ultimately admitted to the count. This stands in contrast to some American states, where those who cast the equivalent of postal or absent votes can track their progress online.
New South Wales by-election latest:
• It is now clear that the by-elections will not be held simultaneously with the December 4 local government elections as initially anticipated. The Guardian reports that the state’s electoral commissioner, John Schmidt, told a parliamentary committee hearing yesterday that “it wouldn’t be possible or sensible to try and aim earlier than the middle of February”, in part because the government’s “piecemeal funding” of his agency had left it with inadequate cybersecurity standards.
• Labor has announced it will field a candidate in Bega, making it the only one of the five looming by-elections in which the Coalition and Labor are both confirmed starters. James O’Doherty of the Daily Telegraph (who I hope got paid extra for pointing out that “Labor has chosen to contest the seat despite Leader Chris Minns last month criticising the looming by-election as expensive and unnecessary”) reports nominees for Liberal preselection will include Eurobodalla Shire mayor Liz Innes and, possibly, Bega Valley Shire councillor Mitchell Nadin.
• Anton Rose of Inner West Courier reports Liberal hopes in Jodi McKay’s seat of Strathfield are not high, particularly if Burwood mayor John Faker emerges as the Labor candidate, and that the party would “not be mounting a vigorous campaign”. One prospective Liberal nominee is said to be Natalie Baini, a sports administrator who was said earlier in the year to planning a preselection against Fiona Martin in the federal seat of Reid.
Poll news:
• A Redbridge Group poll conducted for Simon Holmes a Court’s Climate 200 non-profit group records Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s primary vote as having slumped from 49.4% in his blue-ribbon Melbourne seat of Kooyong to 38%. With the Greens on 15%, well short of the heights achieved with Julian Burnside as candidate in 2019, such a result would put Frydenberg under pressure from Labor on 31%. Around half of the balance is attributed to the United Australia Party, which seems doubtful in an electorate such as Kooyong. The objective of the poll was to test the waters for a Zali Steggall-like independent challenge, and responses to some rather leading questions indicated that such a candidate would indeed be competitive or better. The survey was conducted from October 16 to 18 by automated phone polling from a sample of 1017.
• Liberal-aligned think tank the Blueprint Institute has results from a YouGov poll on attitudes towards carbon emissions policy, conducted in nine regional electorates from September 28 to October 12 with samples of around 415 each. In spite of everything, these show large majorities in favour of both halving emissions by 2030 and net zero by 2050 even in such electorates as Hunter and Capricornia. Even among coal workers (sub-sample size unclear), the results are 63% and 64% respectively.
• The Australia Institute has published its annual Climate of the Nation survey, based on a poll of 2626 respondents conducted by YouGov in August.
• It took me a while to update BludgerTrack with last week’s Resolve Strategic and Roy Morgan results, but now that it’s done, I can exclusively reveal that they made very little difference. Labor is currently credited with a two-party lead of 53.8-46.2.
Also:
• Antony Green has published his analysis of the finalised Victorian state redistribution.
Boerwar @ #2430 Wednesday, November 10th, 2021 – 12:03 pm
Yes, we are worse. China is actually doing stuff. Australia is doing nothing.
Actually, we are doing worse than nothing, since we are actively working to undermine those countries that are actually doing stuff.
Barney in Tanjung Bunga says:
Wednesday, November 10, 2021 at 1:10 pm
…..
In some parts China is very very developed, but get away from those areas and it is a very different country.
===========================
That would ‘xisplain’ why China’s domestic coal production reached a record annual level this year and also ‘xisplain’ why it is absolutely necessary for China to increase the measely 53% of the world’s coal burning that it already does.
Boerwar
You don’t understand the difference between a target and a plan.
You don’t understand that a plan that takes a country to zero emissions by 2050 is better than a plan that *never* gets a country to zero emissions.
You don’t understand that the Coalition demolished all of Labor’s mechanisms that got us most of the way to our 2030 target, and are now claiming credit for what Labor did.
You don’t understand that we need both per capita and total emissions as measures to inform our decision making.
Let’s try to keep our heads on straight and not mix up all these things, ok?
That’s not to say that China’s plan is great. It’s not. That’s not to say that China’s intermediate target is great. It’s not. That’s not to say China will faithfully implement their plan. Maybe they won’t. That’s not to say that the assessment linked to has gotten the overall assessment of each country correct. Maybe they haven’t (for example, do they take into account our states’ plans?). But specifically regarding (on paper) plans, they are correct.
Australia’s plan will not (without a miracle, or being assisted by individuals making their own “good choices”) get *any* country to zero emissions, not on any timescale. That’s not hard to beat. That’s why it’s rated zero.
“Traveling from Queanbeyan to Braidwood has that sort of feel about it…”
Ahuh. I have to drive up to Toowoomba next week.
As I was scrolling through I note that P1 has addressed a post to me. Waste of time, P1. I simply never read your tendentious crap anymore. Unlike some bludgers I long ago realized that engaging in actual discussion with you always ended the same bad way.
I trust that you are insisting that the people who maintain the remote roading and bridging to your remote ecological retreat do so without emitting carbon, that the supplies you get and disseminate to your clients is carbon zero, and that your clients travel to and from your remote location are also carbon zero.
Wouldn’t want a hypocrite bludging on bludger, now would we? Off you go!
Dandy Murray says:
Wednesday, November 10, 2021 at 1:20 pm
“Traveling from Queanbeyan to Braidwood has that sort of feel about it…”
Ahuh. I have to drive up to Toowoomba next week.
———————————-
Ah ha! I like Braidwood. We have friends down Araluen way.
I worked there with a bunch of chaps back in 2006. We called it Toodogs.
The local extremists were just starting to flex their muscles.
The drive from Toodogs to Stanthorpe is…. interesting. Cold place.
‘DisplayName says:
Wednesday, November 10, 2021 at 1:18 pm
Boerwar
You don’t understand the difference between a target and a plan.
……………………………………
Go tell Xi the difference. I am sure he would be fascinated.
His target or plan is to increase emissions until AT LEAST 2030.
He has no target and no plan for zero net 50. He has no target or plan to get to zero net 2060.
While you are at it, you could sell him some peace studies. You could start by reminding him that there is no reason in the world for China to spending (officially) 5% of its GDP on war making stuff.
Boerwar, you’ve gone from accidentally conflating target and plan to deliberately conflating them. That’s taking a mistake and turning it into a deliberate deception.
Have you been taking classes from ScoMo? Because he sure as hell would like everyone to believe that his (unlegislated) target is a plan.
Deflection.
I saw some comments earlier about nuclear power vs nuclear subs.
A quick comment on nuclear subs and nuclear power – nobody should be conned that needing nuclear subs means you must have nuclear power, or that having one makes getting the other easy. There are some skills and components in common, but the two technologies are very different between civilian land power reactors and naval ship/sub reactors. The fuel rods and refuelling arrangements, regardless of which type is chosen (LEU or HEU) are also very different.
Committing to one does not need or enable the other. You need skilled people for both. The US Navy has its own Naval Reactors program that is completely separate (and very successful) to the US civilian nuclear industry.
Several countries that have successfully made safe nuclear reactors (South Korea, Sweden and Germany) but have not built nuclear subs. In all three cases their potential naval enemies are nearby and there is no need for nuclear subs. So they have short range diesel subs.
Several countries have had nuclear power and still had difficulty building nuclear subs. The UK opened Windscale in 1956 but still needed US help to build HMS Dreadnought by 1963.
Nuclear power is still hopelessly uneconomic for civilian purposes.
So for me, the bottom line is even if we do now have legitimate reason to have nuclear powered subs (only) Australia (and Labor) should not go anywhere near the idea of having a domestic nuclear power industry. It would be technically unnecessary, economically crazy, and politically suicidal.
Griff @ #2298 Wednesday, November 10th, 2021 – 9:13 am
Anti-psychotic vs anti-emetic effects – or neither?
Boerwar @ #2504 Wednesday, November 10th, 2021 – 1:22 pm
You mean like those PBer’s who claim never to read my posts, but then can’t ever seem to resist responding to them?
It is not my problem if you choose not to (or simply can’t) defend the stuff you post. Most of it I am willing to let simply slide by, but I will continue to comment on those that are too egregious to let pass.
Toowoomba is a conservative sink hole.
The Coalition are keen on nuclear power:
1. To use as a wedge
2. As a distraction to appear to be doing something
3. Because it cannot displace coal in any significant degree for twenty years or more, so no impact on fossil fuel profits
4. To soak up funds which would otherwise go towards renewables.
Bloody depressing we have SCOMO as PM.. ZERO intellect, passion or empathy… Paul Keating still has it all…
“Eight submarines against China in 20 years time, a handful of toothpicks at the mountain. Kim Beazley and I … built the Collins. I built the Anzac frigates, they were built for the defence of Australia.”
BRING BACK PAUL!
The same could be said of any “fleet” of 8-12 conventionally armed submarines. Doesn’t matter if they’re the current model, French diesel, French nuclear, or US nuclear. All equally useless in any serious military action against an opponent the size of China.
Great song and clip Griff. Thanks
God the Americans are good at musical arrangements.
Anyone who is upset that Australia’s “plan” (which can be summed up as “someone else will take care of it”) is so easily beat, even by a country with a mediocre track record like China, should go complain to ScoMo.
I’d love to be able to say our plan is better than China’s (whose plan is inadequate, no doubt). I hate to have to point out the truth of the comparison between plans. What I won’t do is push ScoMo’s deceptions so that we can feel better about ourselves.
PJK commented on the crackdown on corruption in China to improve civil society saying that Singapore had cracked down on corruption
America is a very uncivil society with 83 school shootings in past 4 years plus all the others
Any one watching the Stan Grant re-education hour to expunge the seditious thoughts of PJK
Even though he a very old man he is still alert
Usman making a point to Chappelli
a r says:
Wednesday, November 10, 2021 at 1:51 pm
The same could be said of any “fleet” of 8-12 conventionally armed submarines. Doesn’t matter if they’re the current model, French diesel, French nuclear, or US nuclear. All equally useless in any serious military action against an opponent the size of China
_____________
Yes but you are forgetting their non military functions. Makes some people stand straighter. It’s a shot in the arm for Nationalists, a rush of blood to certain organs. More people saluting. Uniforms that need to be crisply folded.
Gotta love PJK, but the point of a submarine fleet, even a small one, is sea denial: a modern submarine (whether SSK or SSN) can absolutely destroy an entire large fleet of surface ships around those pinch points. There are plenty of said pinch points in Australia’s strategic maritime zones of interest.
Paul Keating is about a year younger than Joe Biden.
Firefox says:
Wednesday, November 10, 2021 at 1:09 pm
….there’s nothing wrong with Albo having someone from the ALP taking his photos. Same goes for SHY and Morrison….
Nearly all communication-values are relayed/transmitted/received by visual means. Written and aural instruments account for less than 10% of all communication, and even then these only register with recipients if they are consistent with the visual messaging.
So it makes good sense that public/political figures try to use the visual to convey their messages. Morrison clearly understands the power of the visual.
Of course, the environment is dense with visual information. There’s a vast amount of transmission/depiction – the display/exhibition/promotion of “visual content” – going on 24/7. It’s so easy to produce this material that most of it is entirely vacuous and ephemeral. It is out of date the moment it’s published. So political figures invest heavily in generating new content.
This is the mass communication of materials that have almost no formal substance whatsoever. It follows that the visual is almost never about reality. It is entertainment or amusement or distraction. It is read that way by consumers too. This means that political communication is also read as a form of distraction. The premise of this genre is that it will have no substance. It is purely image-casting. That’s all. Consumers/voters know it. They discount nearly all of it. They can do this because it is incredibly “cheap”, abundant and absolutely disposable and/or re-useable.
How to communicate with voters when the very means of communication specify that the “messages” will be without any real-value? It’s no wonder that politics has so few “followers” or “likes”, and that politicians are so often considered to be inter-changeable chameleons.
AR
“Like throwing a handful of toothpicks at a mountain.”
The same could be said of any “fleet” of 8-12 conventionally armed submarines. Doesn’t matter if they’re the current model, French diesel, French nuclear, or US nuclear. All equally useless in any serious military action against an opponent the size of China.
Paul Keating’s point is that Australia doesn’t need to patrol the continental shelf on China’s coast on America’s behalf because China economy is now 125% of American economy and growing
China has no interest in attacking Australia, they are expanding into the Stans and have direct rail links from 38 cities into Europe but if we blindly follow USA policy we will be squashed
If Howard hadn’t pissed off Indonesia we would have good relations with Indonesia and would be safer with better standing with ASEAN countries
PJK has a very low opinion of Liberal foreign policy
From the Guardian blog.
The federal government is attempting to lead new “super-secret” evidence against Bernard Collaery in the Timor-Leste spying case, prompting fury from Collaery and warnings from a supreme court judge that it may cause a “perpetual vortex” of delay and secrecy.
Collaery, a barrister charged for his role in exposing Australia’s bugging of Timor-Leste, won a major victory last month, when the ACT court of appeal overturned orders shrouding much of his looming trial in secrecy.
The court found the risk posed to national security by hearing the case in public was minimal, while open justice was crucial in deterring “political prosecutions”, among other things.
On Wednesday, however, lawyers for attorney-general Michaelia Cash told the ACT supreme court that they wanted to introduce “updated” evidence about the national security risks posed by hearing aspects of the Collaery case openly.
They argued the national security situation had changed significantly in the 20 months that it has taken for Colleary’s appeal to be heard and resolved.
The government now wants to produce new “court-only evidence” – evidence only the judge can see, and not Collaery – on the security risks. It wants to appoint its own special counsel, paid for by the Commonwealth, to examine the material on behalf of Collaery.
Collaery’s barrister, Christopher Ward, SC, criticised the move as a “carte-blanche” attempt to re-open the case by leading fresh evidence.
“It’s described gently as being updated evidence, but it’s fresh evidence, your honour,” he said.
The process that the Commonwealth want to take to get the new evidence before the court would take months and may trigger another appeal, extending the timetable further.
Justice David Mossop questioned whether there would ever be an end to the case, if the attorney-general wanted to continually produce new evidence updating the court on new developments in national security.
“Is there any prospect of this matter ever being completed? Or will we be stuck in a perpetual vortex of updating,” he said. “You may not want to answer that but I’m just telling you what I think, and perhaps thinking out loud a little too much.”
Outside of court, Collaery slammed the move, saying he was wholly opposed to the Commonwealth relying on new “super-secret evidence” that was kept from him and his lawyers.
“This takes the commonwealth’s hypocritical obsession with secrecy to new heights when one considers recent events,” he said.
“I strongly object to the court being given and relying on evidence we can’t see. It’s a shameful mockery of open justice.”
How I miss Keating, to think he was replaced by that intellectual Pygmy Howard, the Australian electorate are as dumb as dog shite
Andrew_Earlwood says:
Wednesday, November 10, 2021 at 2:09 pm
Gotta love PJK, but the point of a submarine fleet, even a small one, is sea denial: a modern submarine (whether SSK or SSN) can absolutely destroy an entire large fleet of surface ships around those pinch points. There are plenty of said pinch points in Australia’s strategic maritime zones of interest.
_______________
How convenient if an invasion fleet begins to assemble at a ‘pinch point’.
billie
The Libs have not changed since the days they suffered mass apoplexy over Hawke? Keating? saying Australia is part of Asia.
Lurker
Unless China has invented teleportation, to get to Australia they have to pass through such points. At least, according to what’s known as “geography”.
Carbon neutral travel i hope.
SK
Extraterrestrial carbon offsets will take care of that :P.
DisplayName says:
Wednesday, November 10, 2021 at 2:17 pm
Lurker
Unless China has invented teleportation, to get to Australia they have to pass through such points. At least, according to what’s known as “geography”.
_________________
really? I’m certain the last time I looked at a map it’s not a requirement to pass through Indonesian straits to get to Australia. Just go wide around New Guinea. You’d end up in Brisbane.
Not that this is even a remote likelihood of happening. With 1 million Australians of Chinese descent, I can be certain about this.
Some people have to face the facts that ww2 is gone and it’s not coming back.
“ How convenient if an invasion fleet begins to assemble at a ‘pinch point’.”
Its actually pretty hard to avoid them – consult an atlas: China is not ‘landlocked’ as Tom opined months ago, but the four main seas that comprise its coastline a replete with pinch points. There are further pinch points on the other side of said seas and further out to the south, east and west around the Philippines, Malay peninsula and the Indonesian Archipelago.
poroti says:
Wednesday, November 10, 2021 at 2:17 pm
billie
PJK has a very low opinion of Liberal foreign policy
The Libs have not changed since the days they suffered mass apoplexy over Hawke? Keating? saying Australia is part of Asia.
Donald Horne was right.
Marshall McLuhan was right.
Andrew_Earlwood @ #2521 Wednesday, November 10th, 2021 – 1:09 pm
Define “large”.
Each sub can carry a mix of 28 conventional torpedoes/missiles/mines. Say you’ve got all 8 subs, perfect coordination, perfect accuracy, guaranteed one-hit kills against any target, and zero retalliation. You can sink 224 targets before your subs become useless. That’s about half of the navy China has right now. The other half then proceeds unchallenged while the subs all rush back towards a friendly port for resupply.
And also, quantify the pinch points. All an adversary has to do is route through more pinch points than we have subs. Not hard since we’ll only have 8 and the oceans are vast.
They cannot pick Mitchell Starc for the first test (but they probably will). He somehow looks underdone and overcooked at the same time.
Jhye Richardson or Neser?
Andrew_Earlwood says:
Wednesday, November 10, 2021 at 2:23 pm
“ How convenient if an invasion fleet begins to assemble at a ‘pinch point’.”
Its actually pretty hard to avoid them – consult an atlas: China is not ‘landlocked’ as Tom opined months ago, but the four main seas that comprise its coastline a replete with pinch points.
________________
So now we are going to ride our subs up to the coast of China and threaten them? Utterly hilarious.
Lurker
Sure. So then we would argue that the subs serve the strategic function of limiting China’s options and pushing their fleets out that direction.
Isn’t that still a valuable function?
“ Some people have to face the facts that ww2 is gone and it’s not coming back.”
More to the point: the hegemony that America asserted at the end of WW2 across the whole Asia-pacific is coming to an end. China wants primary in East Asia: that’s inevitable. The question is how we (‘we’ australia specifically, but also ‘we’ democratic society’s with skin in the game in Asia) handle ourselves given that power shift.
This whole subs thing is just masturbation material for boys who never grew up and spend too much time watching ww2 documentaries.
Firefox @ Wednesday, November 10, 2021 at 12:46 pm
You ask if I want to “go there” when I say that asking who is taking the photos for Morrison in Glasgow is the same as asking who is taking the photos for SHY. You return serve with Albanese having a photo taken.
If you cannot see the difference between funding people to go to Glasgow to take photos as opposed to taking photos back here in Australia, then I don’t think rational argument will persuade you 😉
Ask yourself, are you truly helping the cause you believe in? Are you actually convincing people to vote Green? Partisan promotion for any party (or P1’s independent campaign) rarely helps.
I think we all agree Australia is not going to take on China by ourselves. The question then is what purpose our military serves within a larger allied force. Controlling/constraining your opponent’s options is as important as (if not more important than) shooting them.
Anyone have a link to live or recorded video of Keating at the NPC?
Lurker
Probably true 😛
25 million against 1.2 billion people. Hardly a contest.