Note the post below from Adrian Beaumont on today’s momentous French presidential run-off election. Closer to home:
• As the Liberal Party divides on Warringah candidate Katherine Deves and her contentious pronouncements on transgenderism, Chip Le Grand of the Age/Herald observes a related debate as to “whether a Coalition government could be turfed out of its inner-city electorates in Sydney and Melbourne but take enough ground in the suburbs and regions to stay in power”. Whereas some rate this as “electoral madness”, an unidentified conservative is quoted as saying Kooyong is “just a seat” and “certainly not the jewel in the crown anymore”. Those of the latter view point to Boris Johnson’s success in the “red wall” of northern England and the epochal populist-driven realignments in the United States and France.
• David Crowe of the Age/Herald reports front-benchers on both sides have identified the following seats as “still in play”: “Reid, Gilmore and Parramatta in NSW; Corangamite, McEwen and Chisholm in Victoria; Swan, Pearce and Hasluck in WA; Longman, Leichhardt and Brisbane in Queensland; and the Tasmanian trio of Bass, Braddon and Lyons”. This includes five seats held by Labor along with ten by the Coalition. A Labor source says they would “prefer to be us than them at this stage”, not least because the teal independent insurgency had the Coalition “fighting on two fronts”, but that defeat remained possible.
• Further to the above, former Queensland Labor state secretary Cameron Milner writes in The Australian that the Liberals are pursuing Labor-held Lilley in Brisbane, Lingiari in the Northern Territory (where Scott Morrison campaigned yesterday) and Corangamite in western Victoria. Milner also describes Scott Morrison’s support for Katherine Deves as “brilliant foghorn politics”, deployed to “virtue-signal their values” to One Nation and Clive Palmer voters whose preferences will be up for grabs. Phillip Coorey of the Financial Review likewise offers that “in the suburbs, the regions and the religious communities, the government – and Labor – believes the Deves issue is going gangbusters in Scott Morrison’s favour, messy as it may be”.
• A Labor online attack against Gladys Liu, who holds the Melbourne seat of Chisholm for the Liberals on a margin of 0.5%, has been described as a “desperate, dishonest, racist attack ad” by Josh Frydenberg and a “sewer tactic” by Scott Morrison. While these claims are receiving sympathetic coverage from the news media, the contentions raised in the ad do not seem especially misleading.
• Ben Raue of The Tally Room has interactive colour-coded maps recording the extent to which seats have swung towards one major party or the other since 2004. It can be observed that Labor has strengthened in the growth areas of Melbourne but weakened in central Queensland and Sydney’s inner west and south.
• Following the publication of full candidate details on Friday, I have finished fleshing out my federal election guide with further photos, candidate details and full lists of candidates in ballot paper order.
BBoy
Ah schucks…the pee stains make him a daggy dad dontcha know!
Morrison’s clever marketing plan!
What next? Skidmarks?
All this rampant speculation really underscores the need for some quality polling both nationally and at state and/or seat level so we have some idea of how ANY of this is actually playing outside our respective bubbles besides what partisans and fuckwit journalists are saying.
I’d almost take a bloody Morgan at this point.
Taylormade @ #27 Monday, April 25th, 2022 – 7:00 am
Hey, TailoredMerde, have you explained yet how the Chinese government exerts control over the Port of Melbourne via a 20% share expressed by a single expert Australian member of an 8 person Board, supplied by an Australian branch of an international Investment Management corporation headquartered in New York, which board member also represents a South Vietnamese investment fund with an equal share? You apparently think that such a situation is the same as giving a Chinese Communist Government corporation a 100%, 99 year lease and total executive control over the Port of Darwin!
I wonder how stupid you have to be to be prepared to display such abject stupidity so openly on a public forum. You are a perpetual bad joke.
I agree with Ven’s imaginary swear words.
Kooyong is just a seat, the treasurers seat;
– If they lose Kooyong, who will be the (shadow)treasurer ?
– If they aren’t concerned about that one seat, why have they spent so much defending it.
– If they cant defend the treasurers seat with such effort, what hope do other ‘blue-ribbon’ seats have.
They are desperately trying to rationalize their impending doom.
John Howard should have been investigated by the International War Crimes Commission for his decision to involve Australias military in the illegal war in Iraq that was based on US lies about WMD and resulted in the unnecessary deaths of over 600,000 Iraqis.
”
maxsays:
Monday, April 25, 2022 at 8:13 am
Demonising trans people to win an election would be yet another new low for Australian politics
—————
John Howard, who the LNP and the media love to fete as a respected elder statesman, as opposed to a war criminal, behaved no less despicably with the children overboard.
”
I again told to myself”John Howard is a crook “.
“• David Crowe of the Age/Herald reports front-benchers on both sides have identified the following seats as “still in play”: “Reid, Gilmore and Parramatta in NSW; Corangamite, McEwen and Chisholm in Victoria; Swan, Pearce and Hasluck in WA; Longman, Leichhardt and Brisbane in Queensland; and the Tasmanian trio of Bass, Braddon and Lyons”. This includes five seats held by Labor along with ten by the Coalition. A Labor source says they would “prefer to be us than them at this stage”, not least because the teal independent insurgency had the Coalition “fighting on two fronts”, but that defeat remained possible.”
This list seems a little odd:
What information is there that Corangamite an McEwan are in play in Victoria?
Why isnt Reid, Robertson and Page ‘in play’ in NSW? Is Macquarie really in play, given Morrison’s neglect of bushfire riven Blue Mountains (which is the Labor positive half of the electorate), and the recent floods smashing the Liberal positive half of the Electorate along the upper reaches of the Hawkesbury valley?
Nothing about how the campaign is panning out in Forde, Flynn and Leichhardt, notwithstanding both campaigns putting in significant time and resources in those seats.
CAN’T: Get a chopper into Lismore inside a week.
CAN: Draw a red line and stop Chinese expansion.
Andrew,
It’s just piss and wind. The idea Labor can be polling 53:47 across the board at worst yet lose a raft of seats like that while winning others is bullshit. It doesn’t happen that way.
On John Howard as the only ex PM trotted out to support his party: like most ex PMs, Howard departed unpopular. I think the Libs still bring him out for these interventions because he’s at least still popular with Libs and not utterly hated by the middle ground- Turnbull is not even popular with his own party (and also hates them and wouldn’t lift a finger to help Morrison if he was on fire), Abbott is grossly unpopular outside the hard right and they’re aware of that, Rudd and Gillard are divisive within Labor, Keating is still popular within Labor but everyone knows he’s not popular outside AND, um, he’s liable to say inflammatory shit that’s a mile off ALP policy. And Hawke is dead.
Andrew, the ‘brains-trust’ of each side are probably just playing games with each other.
Pee for Austin
Pee for Houston
Pee for land my heart got lost in
Shake twice for Texas
_ Sheldon Cooper
Morning all and happy Anzac Day. I pay my respects to my great uncle Cpl Isaac Mills, who dies at Bulleycourt in WWI, and my uncle Lt Cmdr Robert Sutton, who died prematurely after a career as an RAN frogman and submariner.
Malcome
On Howard & war crimes…
It wasn’t the lack of trying.
Has Morrison sent a congratulations text to Macron yet?
Confessions
“ If Labor wins on 21 May I can imagine Macron being the first international leader to personally phone Albo to congratulate him. ”
Perhaps Albo will also be the first Australian leader to personally phone Macron and apologise for the lies of his predecessor.
Still not clear of Macro; is taking Scomo’s calls.
Besides, as we found out with the Solomons PM, Scomo doesn’t hold a phone.
sprocket_ @ #114 Monday, April 25th, 2022 – 9:02 am
Morrison doesn’t do prompt responses.
”
Lars Von Triersays:
Monday, April 25, 2022 at 8:25 am
Ven, r u ok?
”
I was but this thread where WB compiled “sewer” politics of Australia sent my blood pressure up.
BTW, do you like today’s thread.
sprocket_ @ #113 Monday, April 25th, 2022 – 9:02 am
And yes, of course it will be a text rather than a phone call. Easier for the PMO to leak a reply text rather than a phone call!
When Morrison placed Deves as the candidate for Warringah, did he happen to mention that his plan was for her to become a human sacrifice to the cause of picking up votes elsewhere?
The question now is whether she will last until the election or will pull the plug early.
It would be great if one ANZAC day we focused more on veterans that are still alive.
There is still that royal commission going on, which is more important than ANZAC day imo.
As expected, Macron wins. Despite all the talk of Le Pen having a very good chance of winning.
In light of Putins war in Ukraine, she had no chance.
She may have actually won in other circumstances.
bug1 @ #120 Monday, April 25th, 2022 – 9:05 am
I did. I sent a shout out to our PB Veterans early this morning. They’ve endured a lot and seemingly maintained their sanity!
An election strategy that causes internal ructions to the Liberal Party. We may have some inkling what will happen this election due to opinion polling, but whither the Liberal Party? Fascinating.
My OH’s grandfather didn’t like Anzac Day & would get quite depressed.
He was a Warrant Officer with the RAAF.
citizen @ #119 Monday, April 25th, 2022 – 9:04 am
She’s a determined zealot. She’ll last.
Personally ven I’m a little indifferent atm.
I’m guessing there will be a lot of tactical decision making going on this week – do we write off FNQ/ fight for FNQ, how do we return with Albo from iso, how is deves/ trans working out? , where do we spend our time.
It’s still Labor’s to loose from here imo. People have turned off ScoMo but Labor hasn’t sealed the deal.
Labor seems to be fighting ScoMo’s campaign about a choice between the 2 leaders NOT the referendum on ScoMo Labor wanted. Also Labor hasn’t with 36% primary really crystallised a mood for change. Even so with 53-47 they should win with less than 4 weeks to go.
Have the Liberals given up on Dobell? I thought, according to their thinking leaked to the supplicant media, it was a gimme!?!
”
Lars Von Triersays:
Monday, April 25, 2022 at 8:48 am
Sprocket is there such a beast as a Liberal moderate?
”
Lars
KK never lost the seat she contested even in 2019. She might have saved a few seats if at all in 2019.
Wow, Michael Pascoe unloads the big bazooka on Anzac Day – and doesn’t miss..
Meanwhile, the wrecking ball that is Peter Dutton goes on its merry way, always happy to make a bad situation worse.
Mr Dutton, regular readers will know, has done more than anyone to ensure no other country has a relationship with China as bad as ours, starting with his echoing of Donald Trump on COVID and never letting up since as he has beaten the drums of war.
His latest effort is to repeatedly suggest the Solomon Islands government had been bribed to sign the security deal with China.
It might have been, but only an undiplomatic clown would say so.
And who is to say money Australia has poured into the South Pacific hasn’t been to buy favours? A glaring failure of the Liberal National government has been breaking its repeated promise to introduce a beneficial ownership register – aside from annoying the local real estate industry, it could be embarrassing to expose what some of Australia’s political friends own here. (It’s that integrity thing again.)
It’s not for nothing that I call Peter Dutton the Offence Minister. In my opinion, he has done more than anyone to make Australia a target while presiding over an ill-equipped, bungle-prone and undermanned defence force that seems to delight in signing up for things it is sold, rather buying what Australia actually needs.
And more evidence for the suggestion that, for party political purposes, whatever hairy-chested blustering Mr Dutton pulls, Mr Morrison has to top.
As antithetical as the Offence Minister is to diplomacy, I cannot recall an Australian Prime Minister being as diplomatically stupid as Scott Morrison on Sunday.
Already on the nose with South Pacific nations for the Coalition cutting aid and dismissing their climate change concerns, Mr Morrison actually threatened these sovereign states with military action if they didn’t do as they were told.
“We won’t be having Chinese military naval bases in our region on our doorstep,” he said in the context of having “the same red line” as the United States.
He may as well have told these proud people to know their place or they won’t be allowed to pick our fruit for us any more.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2022/04/25/michael-pascoe-australia-spooks-rogue/
I spent some considerable time after the last election explaining the dynamics of why Labor gets whacked rural and regional electorates. These dynamics essentially handed Morrison his ‘surprise’ win. My specific focus was the role of the Greens, wittingly and unwittingly.
My view, FWIW, is that Morrison and Joyce are turbocharging the dynamics for this election with a view to moving the dynamics closer to the urbs. In the process, they are clearly prepared to risk the Teal seats. Deves is at the heart of this pivot.
One path to a second term for Morrison is that he essentially holds Labor’s net gains to a couple of seats by eking out a few gains here and there and then negotiates with the Teals who are, after all, nothing much more than a part of the broad Liberal church temporarily in schism. None of them have shown much interest in a principle approach to social democracy, wealth redistribution or, indeed, to the need for a more comprehensive and progressive tax base to ensure real (economic) justice for women. The Teals are pissed-off female elites who are basically already winners.
Morrison would readily be prepared to arc up climate action, arc up spending on women and install an ICAC if that meant power for him. IMHO, a Teal Deal is in the offing.
Victoria :
There have been another four COVID-19 deaths in Victoria.
There are 441 cases in hospital, with 31 of those in intensive care and nine of those requiring ventilation.
There were 7,643 new cases reported today.
……………………………………………………………………………………………..
NSW :
New South Wales has recorded four more COVID-19 deaths.
There are 1,631 cases in hospital, 64 of those in intensive care.
There were 7,985 new cases announced today.
@Victoria – once the results of the first round were in – it was pretty clear Macron would win this round by a decent margin.
The combo of his slight over-performance, Le Pen’s slight under-performance and the surge of Melenchon as an alternative for second suggested Macron would lose a little skin but still do well.
Yes – I know there’s a thread.
Fess
“Perhaps their departure from Dickson means Labor now has a decent shot at unseating Dutton.”
The chances are very slim, there is no sign or sense of that within the 25km radius I live in with Dickson. In fact you could be mistaken for thinking he’s running unopposed. I’ve seen one Ali a France for flute compared to several Dutton billboards and hundreds of corflutes.
Post of the (very early) morning from Oliver Sutton, in reply to Freya who had posted several comments virtually declaring the Libs the winners.
Jt1983
I didnt buy into Le Pen could still win. Not in light of Putin’s war.
Even though 4 out of 10 still did in fact vote for her.
@Arky
‘(we need…) some quality polling both nationally and state and/or seat level…’
_______
Give Phil Coorey a call. I’m sure he could find a couple of swinging voters to tell us what the whole of Australia’s thinking.
My thought on the Deves ‘promotion’ by Scotty is more likely aimed at ON and UAP voters who they don’t want deserting the party. UAP has been especially anti-Lib in rhetoric on ads. Morrison’s crew are likely worried they will hoover up votes and then NOT be returned at 2nd choice.
Media interpretations (directed by leaks from Lib party central) are likely memes to distort the actuality because the Libs would not want to show they’re very worried about their right flank as well as the teals. They’ve seen how votes bleed to Greens from Labor (though big proportion returned) but the rhetoric coming out of UAP is savagely anti-Lib. Far worse/in your face than Greens attacks on Labor and back by lots of $$$$.
Libs pretend lack of concern about Teals as well … with a compliant media backing that up. But I am sure they’re worried teal voters, who seem primarily Climate Change and Integrity voters, that a big proportion of those won’t come back as second choice either since Libs have said they won’t really act on either.
No mention of Bennelong, Boothby and Flynn, which are all on the radar this time.
Hinkler will stay with the LNP, but Labor have a terrific candidate, Jason Scanes, who is a military veteran and fought in Afghanistan, one bloke to watch in future.
And the so called experts think North Sydney, Wentworth, Goldstein, Curtin and Kooyong are all safe for the Libs?
Arky
Six days since any movement in Sportsbet odds – they are also really hanging out for a new poll. Hoping we get a few in the next two days
Australia voted 60-40 for Same Sex Marriage in 2017. Notwithstanding that it isn’t exactly the same as transgender, it’s highly likely to reflect similar results. Australia clearly said just let these people live their normal lives, free from bigotry, harassment and humiliation.
Are we expected to believe five years later that Australians now think differently as Ms Deves, Morrison and the Libs would have us believe?
We need to vote this cancerous hatred out of this nation and bury it for ever.
”
Vensays:
Monday, April 25, 2022 at 9:11 am
”
Lars Von Triersays:
Monday, April 25, 2022 at 8:48 am
Sprocket is there such a beast as a Liberal moderate?
”
Lars
KK never lost the seat she contested even in 2019. She might have saved a few seats if at all in 2019.
”
It should read
KK never lost the seat she contested even in 2011. She might have saved a few seats if at all in 2012.
All this talk about the Liberals being confident in certain seats reminds me of the SA election. Despite all of the polls pointing to a Labor win, the Liberal Party were confident they had the numbers to hold on. I even heard anecdotal reports that “insiders” thought they had a shot at picking up a few Labor-held seats. Didn’t work out very well for them….
Unless the polls tighten, I don’t see it as being anything but a bit of game play from the Coalition and bed wetting from Labor.
Dutton’s words this morning on the Today Show as per the Guardian blog:
“I just think that’s the reality of our time. We have to have a proper understanding of it. We have to have a conversation and be frank about the intelligence and the advice that we’re receiving and reading.
We shouldn’t take for granted the sacrifice that was made by the Anzacs, or those in World War II or in Vietnam, in the Middle East, in every conflict in between, that somehow that will see us through to eternity without conflict in our region.
… We have to stand up with countries to stare down any act of aggression to make sure we can keep peace in our region and for our country.”
A reminder to Dutton, ‘Lest we forget’ is an expression of mourning for the fallen rather than a general expression of thanks. Anzac Day is a day of remembrance and not the day to beat the drums of war.
Deves was a mistake, not part of a master plan. Don’t give the Libs more credit than they deserve.
If she was part of a master plan, they wouldn’t be hiding her away.
Its all bullshit Evan….its designed to get everyone jumping this way and that so as not to concentrate on the fact that Morrison is a psycho…..stupid stories deliberately planted in the media to get everyone talking about what is totally irrelevant>…..Think it doesnt work?….Just look on this site we will discus for days stuff that in a months time will have been shown to be totally irrelevant.
Morrison and murdoch are manipulating all of us all the time and the sooner we are rid of them both the better for Australia, democracy and our sanity
jt1983 @ #132 Monday, April 25th, 2022 – 9:16 am
So, the Far Left and the Far Right have turned their sights to crippling Macron in the next round of elections:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/24/french-election-2022-results/
zoomster @ #143 Monday, April 25th, 2022 – 9:39 am
My view too. A typical Scomo captain’s pick that looked good on paper, but went horribly wrong in reality.
Evan at 9.34am re ‘seats in play list’…
Exactly. Another piece of pro-Liberal propaganda. “Let’s cherry pick all marginal Labor seats and include some clearly at-risk Liberal seats to look credible, while completely ignoring any of the ‘new’ Teals. Bingo! Morrison has a clear path to victory!”
”
sprocket_says:
Monday, April 25, 2022 at 9:12 am
Wow, Michael Pascoe unloads the big bazooka on Anzac Day – and doesn’t miss..
……….
……….
…….
It’s not for nothing that I call Peter Dutton the Offence Minister. In my opinion, he has done more than anyone to make Australia a target while presiding over an ill-equipped, bungle-prone and undermanned defence force that seems to delight in signing up for things it is sold, rather buying what Australia actually needs.
……..
”
Also, defence force that seems to delight in signing up for things it cancelled.
And Already on the nose with South Pacific nations for the Coalition cutting aid and dismissing their climate change concerns, Mr Morrison actually threatened these sovereign states with military action if they didn’t do as they were told.