All too much preselection news

Both major parties scramble to get candidates in place just weeks before the federal election campaign gets under way.

The diversion of the South Australian election caused this site to take its eye off the ball during a highly eventful period for federal preselections, which it now endeavours to make good. We start in Victoria, where Labor’s process for the Senate is finally coming to a head. In common with the rest of Labor’s Victorian preselections, the matter has been in the hands of the party’s national executive, which asserted control in response to the branch-stacking scandal surrounding Victorian MLC Adem Somyurek. An already fraught situation was gravely complicated by the sudden death of Kimberley Kitching a fortnight ago, whose hold on the Right-mandated position at the top end of the ticket has since been a matter of fierce dispute.

• Kitching’s vacancy will be filled by Jana Stewart, a Muthi Muthi and Wamba Wamba woman and until recently the deputy secretary at the Victorian Department of Justice, who had previously been lined up to run in the safe seat of Pascoe Vale at the Victorian state election in November. Stewart will serve out the remaining months of Kitching’s term and take the one of the two seemingly unloseable positions on the Senate ticket, in an order to be determined. Tom Minear of the Herald Sun reported Stewart had backing from the Transport Workers Union and Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association, the chief Right faction parties to a pact with the Socialist Left that has frozen out the Right forces associated with Bill Shorten. The Shorten forces reportedly favoured Natalie Hutchins, the state Corrections Minister and member for Sydenham. Minear further reported that Fiona McLeod, a barrister who performed creditably as the candidate for Higgins in 2019, was “another name in the mix”.

• Following Kim Carr’s retirement announcement on Sunday, the Left-mandated position at the top of the ticket will be filled by Linda White, retired former assistant national secretary of the Australian Services Union. Carr cited health concerns in bringing down the curtain on a Senate career going back to 1993, but it was widely expected he would lose preselection in any case, most likely to White. There were widespread earlier reports that the position was also being pursued by Ryan Batchelor, executive director of the McKell Institute, but both Stewart and White have in fact emerged unopposed.

• A contest has also been avoided in the south-eastern Melbourne seat of Holt, to be vacated with the retirement of Anthony Byrne, with Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association organiser Cassandra Fernando emerging as the sole nominee. The seat will thus remain with the Right, despite what Tom Minear of the Herald Sun described as “a small push from the Left to claim the seat”. The faction’s favoured nominee appeared to be Jo Briskey, political co-ordinator of the United Workers Union.

In New South Wales, the Liberal Party’s long-delayed preselections for Warringah, Hughes, Parramatta and Eden-Monaro and Greenway are to be determined by a three-person committee consisting of Scott Morrison, Dominic Perrottet and state party president Christine McDiven, following an intervention by the party’s federal executive. Here too legal action is afoot, with earlier federal executive intervention being contested in the New South Wales Supreme Court by conservative activist Matt Camenzuli. The party’s conservative forces stand to benefit from party reforms to increase the power and the rank and file, which Scott Morrison and his centre-right factional ally Alex Hawke have been seeking to circumvent.

• The intervention entails the cancellation of a rank-and-file ballot to choose a candidate for Hughes, held by the once Liberal and now United Australia Party member Craig Kelly. Where previously it was thought an intervention would rubber-stamp the preselection of Alex Dore, a management consultant who lives in Manly, Murray Trembath of the St George & Sutherland Shire Leader reports there is “now speculation war widow Gwen Cherne, who was the inaugural Veteran Family Advocate Commissioner on the Repatriation Commission, is being considered”. The acknowledged front-runners for the now-cancelled rank-and-file ballot were state Holsworthy MP Melanie Gibbons and local lawyer Jenny Ware.

Anne Davies of The Guardian reports that David Elliott, state Transport Minister and centre-right factional ally of Scott Morrison, is considering putting his name forward in Parramatta or Greenway. Elliott’s federal ambitions may be complicated by his recent efforts as minister, which placed him at the centre of a shutdown of Sydney’s public transport network last month.

• One rank-and-file ballot that was allowed to proceed was that to replace John Alexander in Bennelong, which was won by Simon Kennedy, a partner at consulting firm McKinsey. Anne Davies of The Guardian reports that Kennedy, a factional conservative, emerged an unexpected winner in a rank-and-file ballot over moderate-aligned Gisele Kapterian, former chief-of-staff to Michaelia Cash, by 148 votes to 95.

• A weekend meeting of the party’s state council determined that incumbents Marise Payne and Jim Molan will respectively fill the first and third positions on the Coalition Senate ticket, the second being mandated to the Nationals. This amounts to defeat for the third incumbent, Connie Fierravanti-Wells, who has compared her situation to that of Kimberley Kitching. Another unsuccessful nominee was Mary-Lou Jarvis, a lawyer and Woollahra councillor.

Elsewhere:

• Andrew Charlton, economist and former adviser to Kevin Rudd, is expected to be imposed by Labor’s national executive as its candidate for Parramatta, where the Liberals are hopeful of overhauling a 3.5% margin with the retirement of Julie Owens, the Labor member since 2004. Michael McGowan of The Guardian reports Labor “spent weeks shopping for a celebrity candidate in a bid to railroad a local rank-and-file ballot”, with targets including former state Granville MP David Borger and Sydney barrister Cameron Murphy. A rank-and-file ballot would likely have yielded Durga Owen, a former staffer to Owens, who seemingly was not favoured by Anthony Albanese. Other prospective candidates for a rank-and-file ballot were Alan Mascarenhas, a former Sydney Morning Herald journalist, and Abha Devasia, a Left-aligned lawyer. All three are of of Indian background, and thus representative of a demographic with a strong presence in the electorate. The move to install Charlton, who lives in Bellevue Hill in the eastern suburbs, has predictably “infuriated local branch members”, and drawn criticism from Owens.

• Nick Xenophon announced last week he will seek to return to his earlier vocation at the election as Senator for South Australia, a position he held from 2008 until his ill-fated bid to gatecrash the 2018 state election. He has since maintained a profile as a partner of law firm Xenophon Davis. Rex Patrick, who filled Xenophon’s Senate vacancy in 2017 and later abandoned his Centre Alliance party, appears to have recognised that Xenophon’s return has ended whatever chance he had of being re-elected to the Senate, and is reportedly contemplating a run for the lower house seat of Grey.

Joe Spagnolo of the Sunday Times reports the Nationals will field candidates in lower house seats in Western Australia against the wishes of Mia Davies, the party’s state leader and, thanks to the extraordinary result of the March 2021 election, the state’s Opposition Leader (a nicety that eluded Scott Morrison during his trip to the state a fortnight ago). The party’s strongest seats in the state are Durack and O’Connor, respectively held for the Liberals by Melissa Price and Rick Wilson.

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.

2,399 comments on “All too much preselection news”

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  1. Birmingham just lying his arse off on ABC24 about coalition and Labor policy. I’m starting to dislike him at least as much as Morrison, Joyce and Frydenburg.

  2. @Astrobleme

    “I’d say they would, as they have done everything they say, when given that opportunity.
    See the Gillard Government of 2010-2013”

    Yes, true there was a lot of collaboration, from how it looked. Everything? Was that more Bob Brown (actual, question. Was it more the personalities?)
    I hope that if we end up in a similar situation like 2010 for this year, that Albo gets as much done as Gillard did. And makes sure as little of it can be wiped away by the next load of awful Liberals.

  3. Birmingham just lying his arse off on ABC24 about coalition and Labor policy. I’m starting to dislike him at least as much as Morrison, Joyce and Frydenburg.

    Birmingham sounds like he was gonna cry.
    Bloody Labor promising things!!

  4. Nicko

    Remember when Cormann was the attack dog.

    Now there was a guy who could lie and misrepresent under metres of wet cement.

  5. I’m listening rather than viewing Q & A – if that’s the latest iteration. I think Morrison’s character is so tarnished that he’ll be looking to replace Houston Jnr at Hillsong. How he fooled the electorate is mind-boggling. And it’s a good night from him.

  6. Steve777 @ #2285 Thursday, March 31st, 2022 – 7:57 pm

    Australia is heading for the climate cliff at 200 km/h. The Liberals intend to maintain that speed for now but they say they’ll stop by 2050. Labor, given the chance, will start to apply the brake, not as fast as some want it, but probably as fast as politically achievable. And to achieve anything, you have to win office first.

    So we go off the climate cliff slightly slower under Labor, but we still face the same 10,000 foot drop. Whoop de doo!

    How about we actually pull the emergency brake?

  7. If I heard correctly, Tingle thinks it will be a 14 May election.

    There has certainly been more intensive advertising as Morrison spends as much taxpayers’ money as he can on self promotion, prior to the cut-off date.

  8. Re ‘My fellow Australians’ (Not sure if anyone else has posted to this effect…)

    My recollection is the term was used by Hawke (1983, I think).

    So, Albo channeling Hawke rather than Reagan.

  9. So we go off the climate cliff slightly slower under Labor, but we still face the same 10,000 foot drop. Whoop de doo!

    How about we actually pull the emergency brake?

    So Australia cuts 100% of its emissions puts on the breaks, yet we have only cut about 1% of global emissions, so we still are gonna fall off a cliff… what do we do???

  10. Snappy Tom says:
    Thursday, March 31, 2022 at 9:33 pm

    Re ‘My fellow Australians’ (Not sure if anyone else has posted to this effect…)

    My recollection is the term was used by Hawke (1983, I think).

    So, Albo channeling Hawke rather than Reagan.
    _________________

    Ahh so Hawke was channeling Reagan as it was his catchphrase in 1980. The Whitlam Men and Women of Australia is a bit too binary for todays times anyway

    The Albo speech was certainly reminiscent of past campaigns, medicare, dignity for aged care, positive and the whole ‘vision thing’, what was the 1983 slogan, “Bringing People Together”.

    The whole COVID episode has made compassion, aged care, health and dignity for those on pensions, DSP and jobseeker alot more relevant than a quick $400 tax rebate

  11. Really good stuff from Albo tonight. I don’t know how anyone could watch that and still say Labor have no policies.

    If I may make a (somewhat) bold prediction: Albo is going to destroy Scomo in the debates. If there even is a debate.

  12. Nicko at 9.37pm

    IMHO, what Australia has needed to do on climate in the past decade is exactly what the LNP wouldn’t: commit to greenhouse gas reductions at least as aggressive as other nations, then lobby the laggards to lift their game.

    I don’t know what % that would have meant, I do know that addressing climate change is inherently political and diplomatic.

    The disgrace that is the LNP have placed this nation in the position of lobbying to retard progress in addressing climate change.

    The Greens are likely to have several members of the Senate cross bench. If Labor wins in the House of Reps – THE house of govt in the Westminster, a convention neatly abandoned by Fraser in 1975 – will the Greens support real action on climate change or do what they did over a decade ago, and vote with the Coalition?

  13. ”So Australia cuts 100% of its emissions puts on the breaks, yet we have only cut about 1% of global emissions, so we still are gonna fall off a cliff… what do we do???”

    We do our share. That’s about 1.3%. The same argument could be applied to our involvement in, say,WW2. Or maybe paying your tax. My contribution is so small, let’s save us both the bother. The tax office would be unimpressed

    But be that as it may, turning the ship around from 9 years of inaction can’t be done overnight or even a few years.

    Sure, Labor could pledge to slam on the brakes. The Opposition with the support of the mainstream media loudly proclaim that this will collapse the economy, create mass unemployment, the weekend will be abolished, lamb roasts will cost $10,000, Godless Communism will rule and a giant wombat will devour your home. OK, I made up the last one. The Coalition wins and we keep heading towards the cliff.

  14. There are parts of our Aussie ecosystem that will benefit greatly, immediately and directly from our efforts on climate change. Ground water quality is just one that comes to mind.

    Not all benefits encompass the entire planet.

  15. Happyez

    “Yes, true there was a lot of collaboration, from how it looked. Everything? Was that more Bob Brown (actual, question. Was it more the personalities?)”

    I wouldn’t think it was solely BB, I hope that the new Labor Govt works with the Greens.
    I think it’ll be fine.

  16. JenAuthor

    “Ground water quality is just one that comes to mind.”

    Indeed!
    I am a hydrogeologist, and one of the key indicators of sea level rise is salinisation of near coastal aquifers. There’s a lot of monitoring going on south of Perth (from Lake Clifton to Lake Preston) for this very thing as it does appear to happening.

  17. Snappytom

    ” will the Greens support real action on climate change or do what they did over a decade ago”

    holy smokes. were you asleep from 2010 to 2014??

    The only real action Australia has done, was done with the support of the Greens

  18. Nicko @ #2371 Thursday, March 31st, 2022 – 8:37 pm

    So Australia cuts 100% of its emissions puts on the breaks, yet we have only cut about 1% of global emissions, so we still are gonna fall off a cliff… what do we do???

    What do we do after we cut 100% of our emissions? We export the knowledge, skills, technology, and products needed to accomplish that to everywhere else in the world that still needs to cut their emissions. And make a killing doing that too. Probably more than we ever made prostituting our fossil fuels and other resources to the highest bidder.

    The only problem is we’re so far behind thanks in no small part to the “Australia is tiny, what we do doesn’t matter” crowd that instead of doing those things we’ll be the ones paying other nations for them. Great way to send a prosperous nation straight to the poor-house.

  19. “The only real action Australia has done, was done with the support of the Greens”

    No, that’s not true. Hello, Whitlam. Who’s your target audience with this line?

  20. Good speech from Albo.

    Part budget reply, part opening shot for election season, part well-deserved body slams of Scrotto and co.

    Strong ending too. Threw right back in Scrotto’s face.

    –––––––––

    subgeometer @ #1270 Wednesday, March 30th, 2022 – 12:56 pm

    There won’t be a tightening from here, this will be a blowout, at least that’s what I think(I’m often wrong!).

    It is not beyond plausible that things could actually get worse for the government. There is no iron clad law of politics that says the polls must tighten as election day approaches.

    ––––––––

    Cronus @ #1304 Wednesday, March 30th, 2022 – 1:33 pm

    I sometimes think the bigger issues are exacerbated by the grinding and annoying personal attributes (disdain, smugness, failure to accept responsibility) of a personality such as Morrison. At some undefined time during their cycle, people just imperceptibly decide they’ve had enough and each issue suddenly magnifies their dislike of the individual. I think Morrison has reached this point, everybody else realises it except for him.

    I agree. His credibility and reputation are now not just beyond rehabilitation, but his increasingly desperate ham-fisted attempts at rehabilitating it are only making things worse for him.

    He really is going to need a genuine miracle this time around, not just a 6 week course of Uncle Rupert’s Patent Reputation Restorer.

  21. JM

    Agreed, Morrison is his own worst enemy & his flaws are now deeply baked in to the population’s memory. He will not change because he cannot change and his colleagues know it. They too will rise or fall on his flaws. We sense their desperation.

    Good night all

  22. A positive view of Albo’s speech.
    “ LaurieOakes
    @LaurieOakes
    ·
    3h
    Pretty impressive performance by Albi.”

    I thought Albo went well too. Focused on the basics, and underlined the government’s failures by promising to do what they have failed to do.

  23. “Nicko @ #2371 Thursday, March 31st, 2022 – 8:37 pm

    So Australia cuts 100% of its emissions puts on the breaks, yet we have only cut about 1% of global emissions, so we still are gonna fall off a cliff… what do we do???“

    I must assume Nicko is a Liberal minister – his maths about climate change are all wrong.

    Australia is closer to 2% of global emissions, comparable to larger economies like UK or Italy. So a 100% cut in emissions for us does matter.

    Australia’s exports take our total to around 5% of global emissions, so reducing them matters even more.

  24. This comment in Zelensky’s speech on the MH17 downing is interesting. Despite his meaningless threat to “shirtfront” Putin, what did Abbott actually do about it?

    “ Did we manage to hold accountable those who caused this tragedy? No. Because they’re hiding in Russia,” he said.

    “So the unpunished evil comes back.”

  25. Offers Firefox, “That’s how you cast a vote for serious climate action. Our preferential system is a wonderful asset to our democracy – make the most of it! Giving either Labor or the Libs/Nats a first preference really is a massive waste.”

    tl;dr it didn’t work, it’s sent us backwards, but a different strategy looks promising.

    I’ve long supposed that too. But when I look at our political outcomes, I’m not sure it’s worked that way in practice. I was extremely dismayed by the 2019 outcome, and I’ve spent rather too much of my free time trying to reinterpret politics by comparing the promise and the outcomes. The issue here is that easily gaining a second preference isn’t an indicator that a party needs to change their position, so voting 1 Green, …, n Labor, n+1 Liberal doesn’t effectively signal to the Liberals that they should move left. The signal that you need to change your position is the chance that you might lose a seat, and this isn’t that.

    The Greens have, until the growth of the Teals, basically vacuumed up all the climate change vote and all the climate change activists and all the climate change politicians. The main parties haven’t changed their position from it. If anything, they’ve moved further from the idea of action. Anyone who is interested in action on climate change is not in the government or opposition party rooms, because they’re standing for the Greens.

    The Teals look like they’re having much more success, because they’re separating climate change from other matters. They’re saying “look, we will represent this electorate in the national parliament, and we see some of the interests of this electorate as integrity and climate change action”. The Greens are saying “we are the national party who is interested in climate change and progressive politics, so if you’re interested in climate change, you should vote for us”. I think the Greens appeal works well in party-list PR systems, even those with a district magnitude of 1 (=FPTP), but I don’t think it works well in Australia. It’s not simply a matter of single member districts. Three or more parties compete in electorates in Canada and the UK. If we had FPTP (or as I call it, party-list PR with a district magnitude of 1), then parties have an incentive to attract voters from the Greens. But under AV, they don’t have that incentive at all.

    The Greens have had some success. More than just the seat they hold. They’ve had success in making sure that the members for Cooper, Macnamara and Higgins are further left than they might otherwise have been. But these weren’t cases where voters voted 1 Greens to “send a message” to the party. These were cases where voters voted Greens because the Greens could credibly win the seats, and the other parties had to preselect accordingly. Climate change voters aren’t succeeding by voting 1 Greens just because it won’t reduce the effectiveness of their vote. The Greens are succeeding because they can credibly represent the district.

    At the moment, climate change activists who want to make a big deal would be better by supporting a local independent candidate who is fundamentally oriented towards representing the local community in parliament, and who can credibly claim that the local community has an interest in climate change action. This is a much larger group of people than those who would support the full set of Greens policies and so it will bring the whole country across. They don’t have to win to have an effect; all they have to do is be credible, and self-preservation of major party candidates in similar seats will do the rest. It is likely that someone who had previously been active in the Greens couldn’t be a credible candidate.

    We have two major parties in Australia and several smaller ones – like New Zealand and Canada and Germany and the UK and Spain and many other parliamentary democracies (whether they are called “two party” or “multi-party”). But our political system fundamentally works more like 19th century pre-party politics than 21st century party politics (whether FPTP or PR), and the parties mainly serve as standing motions of confidence/no confidence. Trying to play our game as if it was a slightly modified version of the other game has been a complete failure, and now we’re dragging our feet and literally drowning in it. Review your failures, refine your position, and play the game we have. It’s so urgent now that we can’t accidentally subscribe to the sunk cost fallacy.

  26. Felix the Cassowary says:
    Friday, April 1, 2022 at 12:14 am

    The Greens have, until the growth of the Teals, basically vacuumed up all the climate change vote and all the climate change activists and all the climate change politicians. The main parties haven’t changed their position from it. If anything, they’ve moved further from the idea of action. Anyone who is interested in action on climate change is not in the government or opposition party rooms, because they’re standing for the Greens.

    This is a false conclusion. You shouldn’t take the Greens at face value. The overwhelming majority of those who favour action on climate change are not in the Greens. They are in Labor and they form a significant subset of past-Lib voters.

    The Greens campaign on climate change for tactical reasons only. They use the talk-talk-talk to assail Labor. This is their raison d’être. They run anti-Labor polemics non-stop. This is a deliberately chosen routine. They are manufacturers and disseminators of hate mail. That is the beginning and the end of their political strategy.

    The subject du jour is climate change. But this is for convenience only. Consider…if Labor are elected and enact effective policies to address climate change, where would that leave the Greens? It would leave them with nothing on which to campaign. Without a campaign theme, a single-issue mob like the Greens would soon be gone from the Parliament. Therefore they will at all costs set out to debunk and defeat Labor on this issue.

    For the Greens, climate change means one thing and one thing only: campaign material. It is otherwise completely useless to them.

  27. ‘My fellow Australians’
    A short time ago I telephoned Mr Kevin Rudd and congratulated him and the Australian Labor Party on a very emphatic victory.

    I wonder how Mr Morisons Concession speech will go?

  28. mikehilliard at 7:29 pm

    Russian soldiers are said to be leaving the Chernobyl area and moving into Belarus with some reports suggesting soldiers are being bused to a special medical facility with acute radiation sickness after driving tanks through the “dead zone” around the nuclear plant and – even more astonishingly – digging trenches there.

    Madness.

    Madness if it were true. Just read this WSJ article it looks like it was a tall tale.They were speaking to Ukrainian people at the plant and if the above happened it would surely have got a mention or three.
    There is one rally odd thing though in the report.

    One senior manager said that Chernobyl was now entirely unguarded and the shift workers had themselves locked the gates once the Russians had left. “The complex is left without armed guards,” the manager said.

    March 31, 2022 6:16 pm ET

    Russian forces transferred control of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant back to Ukrainian authorities,………… and plant workers—who said the departing troops had also taken more than 100 Ukrainian national guardsmen away in trucks as prisoners of war……………………..Those Russian forces are now heading home for time off, or to reinforce efforts in the east of the country, said Valentin Heiko, the shift manager who led the Chernobyl staff working at gunpoint. “They were only supposed to stay for a couple of days,” he said. “I think they will send them to Donbas.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-hands-control-of-chernobyl-back-to-ukraine-officials-say-11648764981#:~:text=Russian%20forces%20transferred%20control%20of,Ukrainian%20national%20guardsmen%20away%20in

  29. There is a fascinating 30m commentary on the SA election by Australian Christian Lobby people on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxPjgMnfhHM

    Naming names as to who they talk to and who they support in various parties. Naming David Speirs as an “evangelical christian”. Also recording that One Nation was also in the tent along with both versions of the resurrected Family First party on preferencing against sitting MPs who supported a bill providing for late term pregnancy terminations in very strict circumstances.

    Personally I think the ACL people are gilding the lily a fair bit. They seriously campaigned in Lib marginals Newland Adelaide and and Labor marginal Mawson. About standard swings against Libs in 2 seats and a massive swing for Bignell in Mawson.

    I’d be interested if anybody has looked at the preference run of the parties with the ACL strategy. My guess is that it all came to nothing much but I haven’t seen or calculated any figures.

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