The big news at the moment is of course yesterday’s New South Wales state by-elections, where you can continue to follow the count here. On the polling front, there may be a Resolve Strategic result this week and presumably a Roy Morgan – Newspoll isn’t due, unless The Australian has decided to quicken the schedule with an election in view. That leaves the following preselection news:
• Alison Byrnes, staffer to Sharon Bird, will succeed Bird as Labor’s member for the safe Illawarra seat of Cunningham after the withdrawal of Misha Zelinsky, Australian Workers Union assistant national secretary and former criminal defence lawyer. Rob Harris of the Age/Herald reports it had “become clear in recent days he would not have enough support among branch members”, his prospects having been harmed by the emergence of past online activities in which he made comments denigrating women.
• Some new Labor candidates for unlikely-but-not-impossible seats: Amanda Hunt, chief executive of Uniting WA, will run against Andrew Hastie in the Perth fringe seat of Canning; Naomi Oakley, former police officer and owner of a private security firm, will run in the eastern Melbourne seat of Menzies, where Keith Wolahan will succeed Kevin Andrews as Liberal candidate; and Sonja Baram, a family therapist, will run against James Stevens in the eastern Adelaide seat of Sturt.
• Recently announced independents of note: Kate Chaney, Anglicare WA director of innovation and strategy and member of a family of local Liberal Party and business notables, will run against Celia Hammond in the blue-ribbon Perth seat of Curtin; and Craig Garland, a local fishing identity who made a minor splash in the seat at the by-election in 2018, will again run in the north-western Tasmanian seat of Braddon.
• It was reported this week that ASIO had rumbled an effort by Chinese spies to financially support “sympathetic and vulnerable” candidates for Labor preselection in New South Wales. Anthony Galloway of the Age/Herald reports the agency is satisfied no candidates of concern were endorsed, but that it remains concerned about the ongoing activities of “a wealthy businessman with deep ties in both Australia and China, who was known to ASIO as ‘the puppeteer’”.
A Covid cloud is hanging over the federal parliament after Nationals deputy leader David Littleproud tested positive.
In a tweet, Mr Littleproud confirmed he had tested positive for the virus while in Canberra for the sitting fortnight.
https://www.news.com.au/national/politics/nationals-deputy-leader-david-littleproud-tests-positive-for-covid19/news-story/9d88e30bfead90fd40aa5938ff7a4ad3
Rex
The next term will see a number of challenges facing the Andrews government from the public health system in crisis to the budget in need of careful management and that will bring it into conflict with some of its supporters.
And SMH is promoting Scummo and wife as much as they can.
Why?
1 Because 9 and SMH the one company
2. More views helps advertising income
3. And guess what…might help Libs…who donate to 9
Putin has interfered militarily in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Syria, Georgia and Armenia. Internally he has suppressed Chechnya in a bloody war.
The proposition that if the West will stay west of the Ukraine then Putin will depart all those states is, quite simply, risible. Tell ’em they’re dreaming.
What is it about dictator Putin that many westerners simply don’t get? He is a dictator. He has imperial dreams. He does not want ‘solutions’ to ‘problems’ he creates. He routinely seeks to use force to solve ‘problems.’ Xi is covering his back. Do wake up!
‘Firefox says:
Sunday, February 13, 2022 at 5:16 pm
“This from a poster who has in the past week alone posted dozens of posts attacking Labor”
***
You’re damn right Labor has been criticised….’
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Nice little play with the truth there, Greens Man. Last week you posted dozens of posts which with considerable vitriol and with considerable levels of untruth attacked Labor. Now you are on your knees begging Labor to help the Greens Party.
Do make up your slackarse little mind.
Firefox, its really a stuck needle one themed beat you’ve been drumming for days now?
The bill is shelved. ALP tactics worked with the cooperation of other needed elements.
Yeah some of the tactics were not 100% lily white purist, but to the extent what you’re advocating is representative of the Greens generally (and Bandt’s tweets suggest so) then its basically saying that purism matters far more than outcomes and results. In fact, its the only thing that matters?
How would one expect to get any kind of vote growth with this kind of niche outlook???
And i’m not saying this as an ALP defender, but as someone looking for some reason to take your party seriously?
alfred venison @ #168 Sunday, February 13th, 2022 – 1:27 pm
This was garbage and subsequent events have proven a lot of assertions in this article by Scott Ritter wrong. And he may as well be General Michael Flynn, for all the aid and comfort he gives to Putin and abuse of the Biden regime he dishes out. That he is a writer for RT only reinforces his obvious bias.
Expat Follower
Yeah some of the tactics were not 100% lily white purist, but to the extent what you’re advocating is representative of the Greens generally (and Bandt’s tweets suggest so) then its basically saying that purism matters far more than outcomes and results. In fact, its the only thing that matters?
+1
“Firefox, its really a stuck needle one themed beat you’ve been drumming for days now?
The bill is shelved. ALP tactics worked with the cooperation of other needed elements.
Yeah some of the tactics were not 100% lily white purist, but to the extent what you’re advocating is representative of the Greens generally (and Bandt’s tweets suggest so) then its basically saying that purism matters far more than outcomes and results. In fact, its the only thing that matters?”
***
This is just incorrect. Labor voted for it in it’s entirety in the House. It then went to the Senate where the Greens – not Labor – moved a motion to delay it’s consideration.
You may call opposing disgusting discrimination as purism – I call it the only option available for decent people.
Here’s a reminder of what actually happened and exactly what Labor supported…
As I said, opposing truly awful discrimination is the only option for decent people. That’s the position the Greens took.
Firefox
The government canned its own bill because it wasn’t willing to accept the protection of trans-kids from discrimination. The Greens had little to do with that outcome.
Looking at the Covid new cases, the NT is doing worst on a per capita basis, with about 1/250 of its population reported to be catching the Virus each day.
WA is about where NSW was just before Omicron arrived at the end of November – about 1/35000 reported to be catching Covid daily.
The other States and the ACT are reporting between 1/1000 to 1/500 daily.
https://covidlive.com.au
“+1”
***
If you lot think that opposing utterly abhorrent discrimination is being “purist” then I guess that speaks for itself, doesn’t it…
“The government canned its own bill because it wasn’t willing to accept the protection of trans-kids from discrimination. The Greens had little to do with that outcome.”
***
No, it’s consideration by the Senate has been delayed thanks to a Greens motion. Huge difference. The Greens were directly responsible for the outcome. It remains an active bill before the Parliament waiting to be considered by the Senate.
You can see the progress and current status of the RD/hate bill here: https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r6821
The main thing is, the “right to discriminate” bill has been defeated, owing in no small part to clever tactics by Labor and also to the decision by some liberal Liberals to cross the floor. The greens helped too.
So what next? If the Coalition are returned in May, it will be risen Frankenstein-like from the political grave. If Labor wins, it will stay dead, buried and cremated.
The ‘purist path’ is rarely an effective way to remove a toxic position.
You can bend others to your will if you slowly lead them in a curved direction until they end up facing the other way.
Screaming in someone’s face, telling them they’re wrong, usually only gets their back up and makes them dig their heels in, even when they have an irrational argument.
It is probably why our society is getting more and more polarised — too many ppl yelling and too few leading
AE
“ However, if the swing is on, it seems equally hard for the LNP to retain majority government. ”
I agree, especially in WA.
In fact, after Saturday I find it hard to see how the LNP could remain in government if they were in a minority either. It seems clear after the Willoughby result that the “Teal Independents” are a serious threat to a half dozen inner-city Liberals.
If the Teals win enough seats, how would the LNP form a coalition with them? Core issues for the Teals are climate change and a Federal ICAC, both of which are deal-breakers with the Nationals. So how is a Liberal – National – Teals coalition possible? Assuming an LNP – Greens coalition is out of the question with people like Bandt and SHY, that leaves very little room for an LNP minority government.
Actually firefox i did not want these coalition bills to see the light of day, and they didnt.
i am utterly at peace with those tactics because they worked
your suggestion that the ALP actually wanted the RD bill with no LGBTQ protections is quite plainly ludicrous, the substance is not that they tactically voted for something bad but that they deployed a process that resulted in screwing the govt to the point that it had to pull the bill!
my issues with the Greens go back to voting down the ETS in 2010 with the coalition when it was a forward step that could have been locked in – instead of the nothing we now have (mind you i blame Rudd just as much for not taking it to a DD). Letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, its ok for a 10% party i guess
Socrates.
The current government stays in power after the election. If there is a clear majority supporting a change then that will happen. If not then the current government can carry on until a no confidence motion is passed. That is what the LNP would force. Teals would then have to show their hand and quite a few of them might vote with the LNP or perhaps abstain. LNP carries on as a minority government. Always at risk of losing votes in the HR but using all the powers of government to thwart a Labor Govt getting in place. And potentially trying to force a new election although that would be hard to engineer in the short run
“The ‘purist path’ is rarely an effective way to remove a toxic position.”
***
The really interesting part of all this is that right up until they were informed that Labor was going to support the Coalition’s hate bill, all the Laborites here were vehemently opposed to it and taking a purist position against it too. They were right to do so. None of the people here who are now defending Labor’s support for the bill actually think this garbage is a good idea. None.
This is the post on Feb 5th where I informed everyone as to Labor’s intended position: https://www.pollbludger.net/2022/02/02/situation-normal/comment-page-37/#comments
The rhetoric from the Laborites before and after that post is vastly different.
You all had the right idea to begin with – Labor has betrayed you.
Just when I grow weary of scrolling past a poster, I happen to catch a comment that makes me laugh \ out loud.
Thank you Firefox! Don’t change 🙂
If labor had not dealt with the bills as they did the Greens and the Liberals would now be using it as a wedge. The drama and hurt world be on going. The Greens and the Liberals should be held in comtemp.
Firefox. The Greens are quite capable of nuance and negotiation, same as most parties. Example ACT which you often refer to. It doesn’t help to loudly say other parties who don’t support a Greens position are pathetic, sell out etc. Make your argument about why your position is a good one with some humility and you might win more friends. And no point being provoked by people who don’t have the same position.
”
subgeometersays:
Sunday, February 13, 2022 at 2:40 pm
If the US stops insisting on freedom of navigation(including by Russians) in international waters (including the Mediterranean and straits like the Dardanelles) their whole foreign policy vis-a-vis China collapses. Russia has a port in the Mediterranean at Tartus. And the home base of the navy is indeed in the Black Sea. Blockading the Dardanelles is an act of war
Why has the west got such a hard-on for Putin? Why so gormlessly provide witless bogieman after bogieman, external threats to sustain his power. What is it with the strange sexualisation of his cult of personality, the Kremlin hardly needs propagandists when all the western mastheads do the job for him.
Why keep on expanding Europe’s dependency on Russian gas, 15 years after it was first used as a weapon, in Ukraine.
It’s as if western policy has been built around sustaining these conflicts between tyrants whose common feature is a love of fossil fuels, in order to keep the sharpest minds focussed on Putin and the like, rather than the far more important transition away from fossil fuels.
I kind of despair when I see stuff like this reduced to salacious psycho-babble – thinking here of a few of my friends who are suckers for that rather than anyone’s comment here
”
Subgeometer
Why indeed, I ask why?
One of the main reasons is to win next election for which ever party in power.
“your suggestion that the ALP actually wanted the RD bill with no LGBTQ protections is quite plainly ludicrous
…
my issues with the Greens go back to voting down the ETS in 2010”
***
It’s not ludicrous at all, it’s a matter of fact that is recorded in Hansard. Labor voted for the Coalition’s RD/hate bill unamended in the House. Here is the record of the vote: https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Chamber_documents/HoR/Divisions/details?id=1664
Oh, the CPRS! It’s been a few days since we’ve given that old dead horse another flogging, so I guess it was about time someone mentioned it. It was a woeful policy that would have left us in a worse position than we are now under Morrison. No party that takes the climate emergency seriously could have supported the CPRS. It is a great thing that it never happened. The Greens ETS which we implemented after 2010 was a vast improvement and was actually working to bring down emissions.
In short, support for the CPRS was support for climate denial, just as support for Labor’s pathetically weak 2022 targets is also denying the science of climate change.
Boerwar says:
Sunday, February 13, 2022 at 5:20 pm
Putin has interfered militarily in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Syria, Georgia and Armenia. Internally he has suppressed Chechnya in a bloody war.
Didn’t the USA do that? As well as the rest of Middle East?
Stop sniffing the wrong drugs
Firefox says:
Sunday, February 13, 2022 at 5:53 pm
“The government canned its own bill because it wasn’t willing to accept the protection of trans-kids from discrimination. …….
***
No, it’s consideration by the Senate has been delayed thanks to a Greens motion.
——————-
This is just magical thinking. “The worst of all possible worlds was about to happen (because of nasty, perfidious Labor) and then the Greens moved a procedural motion and everything was bright and shiny again.”
This does not reflect reality. And your insistence on this fairy tale does not reflect well on you.
Rex Douglas @ #241 Sunday, February 13th, 2022 – 1:28 pm
Rex likes his car and flying.
Having been in the room for all the negotiations on the CPRS I can claim with some confidence that the greens strategy was to force a double dissolution and increase their senate numbers.
And of course the claims by Firefox that nothing is better than it the CPRS shows the problem in stark review. The CPRS wasn’t perfect but it was a start. It would have forces industry to commence the change and develop better carbon reduction processes. To now claim nothing is better exhibits an absolute ist approach to an issue.
Oh and I was heavily involved in getting the SA Labour Govt to move it’s renewable energy policy from low levels in a higher level. Where did it end up over 10 years. With a majority of our energy coming from renewable sources.
Has anyone else heard the rumour that The Greens are conspiring with Putin to invade Ukraine? I’ve had trouble finding the original source, but it sounds like something they would do.
It’s a shame the Greens Taking Credit for Things page is no longer on Facebook. It’s not like there will ever be a shortage of material to work with.
Albo moved what could have been a serious wedge for Labor to people like firefox looking like a complete joke as they try to breath air info it.
What is there not to like.
Albo has increased his standing within Labor left by a country mile.
It was a beautiful piece of work by any measure.
Firefox is panting because he thought the Greens had their wedge and Albo turned into smoke rising from their fingers.
frednk @ #285 Sunday, February 13th, 2022 – 3:45 pm
Yep, I can’t remember someone being so angry at a successful outcome. 😆
Firefox your efforts are entertaining, please don’t stop.
“Albo has increased his standing within Labor left by a country mile.”
***
I think they may strongly disagree with that.
Firefox @ #288 Sunday, February 13th, 2022 – 3:51 pm
How would you know?
You love speaking for others.
“And of course the claims by Firefox that nothing is better than it the CPRS shows the problem in stark review. The CPRS wasn’t perfect but it was a start. ”
***
The CPRS was not a start, it would have locked in failure, requiring us to pay billions and billions in compensation to the big polluters if we ever wanted to even attempt to increase it’s effectiveness to the point of being useful. It was a recipe for both environmental as well as economic disaster. It’s a really good thing it never happened.
“How would you know?”
***
I am of the left.
Are we expecting a Newspoll tonight?
Firefox @ #291 Sunday, February 13th, 2022 – 3:57 pm
I thought you were a Green.
And I’m pretty sure the Left contains more than one person. 😆
Is there any subject under the sun on which Stan Grant is not an instant expert?
laughtong @ #292 Sunday, February 13th, 2022 – 3:57 pm
Not on their normal schedule.
‘AngoraFish says:
Sunday, February 13, 2022 at 6:39 pm
Has anyone else heard the rumour that The Greens are conspiring with Putin to invade Ukraine? I’ve had trouble finding the original source, but it sounds like something they would do.’
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Why is that whenever the Greens confront international security and defence policy discussions they immediately go to snarks, sneers and sarcasm? Don’t they take themselves seriously?
One of the many reasons that the Greens are bogged down electorally is that they have promised to halve the ADF, and to turn what is left into a Light Mobile Force. This is according to a presser released by the Greens’ well known international security expert and Greens disarmament spokesperson J S-J.
Historically, and I am certain the Greens disarmament committee researched this aspect of the policy with due diligence, light mobile forces get slaughtered by heavy mobile forces. Why have one at all?
It would be nice to think that the Greens Human Angst Committee, which was extremely busy last week, would spend as much time wringing their hands at the suffering they intend to inflict on tens of thousands of rural and regional human beings whose industries, jobs and towns the Greens have promised to shut down. Similarly, the Hand Wringers would doubtless be distressed to know that their policy is to set Australian soldiers up to get slaughtered should some other state decide to wage war on Australia. Bandt forbid.
Doubtless Dictator Putin would be intrigued by the Greens Plan to subdue his militaristic and imperialistic adventurism by ramming a Peace Studies 101 course down his throat.
As you were. Go back to sleep.
And I’m pretty sure the Left contains more than one person.
You’re not a Green Barney. You don’t get to define reality. Only our betters in the Greens get to do that. Only they have the requisite purity to see through the falsities we poor sinners cannot. We should really be glad to have them around to tell us so often what pathetic creatures we are. It really is our failing that we see their guidance as them merely being a bunch of self absorbed sanctimonious pricks. We really do need to be better.
“I thought you were a Green.
And I’m pretty sure the Left contains more than one person. ”
***
I am and that’s exactly my point.
I am a member of the NSW Greens.
However, I previously voted for Labor. I know how the Labor Left would be feeling about this as I used to be one of them.
Make no mistake, the left are livid.
If you want a multilateral approach to international security, a sound ADF, and well-managed defence acquisitions, Vote 1 Labor.
If you want bombast and routine mismanagement of large equipment contracts, Vote 1 Liberal.
If you want to stick your head in the sand and gut the ADF while sneering at everyone else about your superior military nous, Vote 1 Greens Party.
If you want a disorganized shower of horse traders, grandstanders and petty populists, vote for any of the shower of minors, including the Greens, or the indies
“Not my fault” says Perrottet.
Who is watching 60 minutes this evening ………..not I.
Apparently, Jen speaks up to try and protect Scott from all the vitriol that has been directed his way.
Re Spence @6:14. ” Always at risk of losing votes in the HR but using all the powers of government to thwart a Labor Govt getting in place. And potentially trying to force a new election although that would be hard to engineer in the short run
They’ll also still also have the public purse as their own slush fund.
“If you want…”
***
If you want to be used to support more terrible Coalition policies, vote Labor.
On the other hand, if you want to kick the Liberals out and get serious action to address the climate emergency, vote Greens.