James Massola of the Age/Herald reports that “expectations (are) growing that former Prime Minister Scott Morrison will quit politics”, probably between the May budget and the end of the year, entailing a by-election for his seat of Cook. Please let it be so, because a valley of death stretches before those of us in the election industry out to the second half of next year, to be followed by a flood encompassing the Northern Territory on August 24, the Australian Capital Territory on October 19, Queensland on October 26 and Western Australia on March 8 the following year (UPDATE: It’s noted that the Queensland local government elections next March, inclusive as they are of the unusually significant Brisbane City Council and lord mayoralty, should rate a mention). A normal federal election for the House of Representatives and half the Senate could happen in the second half of 2024 or the first of 2025, the alternative of a double dissolution being presumably unlikely.
Redistributions will offer some diversion in the interim, particularly after the Electoral Commissioner calculates how many House of Representatives seats each state is entitled to in the next parliament on June 27. This is likely to result in Western Australia gaining a seat and New South Wales and Victoria each losing one (respectively putting them at 16, 46 and 38), initiating redistribution processes that are likely to take around a year. There is also an outside chance that Queensland will gain a thirty-first seat. The Northern Territory will also have a redistribution on grounds of it having been seven years since one was last conducted, although this will involve either a minimal tweak to the boundary between Solomon and Lingiari or no change at all. At state level, a redistribution process was recently initiated in Western Australia and should conclude near the end of the year. The other state that conducts a redistribution every term, South Australia, gives its boundaries commission wide latitude on when it gets the ball rolling, but past experience suggests it’s likely to be near the end of the year.
However, the main electoral event of the foreseeable future is undoubtedly the Indigenous Voice referendum, which is likely to be held between October and December. Kevin Bonham has a post on polling for referendum in which he standardises the various results, which differ markedly in terms of their questions and response structures, and divines a fall in support from around 65% in the middle of last year to around 58% at present. For those of you with access to academic journals, there is also a paper by Murray Goot of Macquarie University in the Journal of Australian Studies entitled “Support in the Polls for an Indigenous Constitutional Voice: How Broad, How Strong, How Vulnerable?” In narrowing it down to credible polls with non-binary response options (i.e. those allowing for uncommitted responses of some kind, as distinct from forced response polls), Goot finds support has fallen from around 58% to 51% from the period of May to September to the period of October to January, while opposition had risen from 18% to 27%. The change was concentrated among Coalition supporters: whereas Labor and especially Greens supporters were consistently and strongly in favour, support among Coalition fell from around 45% to 36%.
Forced response questions consistently found between 60% and 65% in favour regardless of question wording, while non-binary polls (i.e. allowing for various kind of uncommitted response) have almost invariably had at over 50%. Goot notes that forced response polls have found respondents breaking between for and against in similar proportion to the rest, which “confounds the idea that, when push comes to shove, ‘undecided’ voters will necessarily vote no”. However, he also notes that questions in non-binary polls that have produced active majorities in favour have either mentioned an Indigenous Voice or the Uluru Statement from the Heart, or “rehearsed the Prime Minister’s proposal to amend the Constitution”. One that conspicuously did not do any of these things was a Dynata poll for the Institute of Public Affairs, which got a positive result of just 28% by priming respondents with a leading question and then emphasised that the proposal would involve “laws for every Australian”. JWS Research got only 43% in favour and 23% against, but its response structure was faulted by Goot for including a “need more information” option, which ruled the 20% who chose it out of contention one way or the other.
Boer, you seem to be under an illusion that the buyer is somehow compelled to keep buying our produce. Perhaps that’s how it worked when the main western export to the Middle Kingdom was opium, but I’m not sure that’s a sustainable business model these days. Perhaps another Peking Legation to put the stick about is in order. What! Perhaps a somewhat underemployed Marise Payne can lead it, and enter the forbidden city aside an elephant.
Lars Von Trier says:
Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 9:32 am
Dalai Lama – tongue sucking the young boy? Time for cancellation? Thoughts?
________
Utterly gruesome.
The Dalai Lama says some wise things but sadly he is a representative of a medieval religious system from Tibet that kept Tibet stuck in the past and included accepted child abuse of child trainee monks by senior monks.
“ To bet everything they will never go any further than that if they believe they can get away with it? Pfft.”
You just haven’t being paying attention to anything I’ve written, have you?
Andrew_Earlwood says:
Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 10:19 am
Boer, you seem to be under an illusion that the buyer is somehow compelled to keep buying our produce. Perhaps that’s how it worked when the main western export to the Middle Kingdom was opium, but I’m not sure that’s a sustainable business model these days. Perhaps another Peking Legation to put the stick about is in order. What! Perhaps a somewhat underemployed Marise Payne can lead it, and enter the forbidden city aside an elephant.
_______
Yes and if they don’t like it, we can sack the Forbidden City and run off with the embalmed corpse of Chairman Mao. Everyone must wear Pith helmets.
malcolm says:
Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 10:20 am
The Dalai Lama says some wise things
__________
Jeffrey Dahmer has also said some wise things.
BK, you could almost separate out the relevant articles re the (dis)United Sh1tshow of America into a dedicated “America is F****d Patrol”.
‘Pueo says:
Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 10:18 am
Swimming pools of the rich driving city water crises, study says
Pools and well-watered gardens at least as damaging as climate emergency or population growth
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/10/swimming-pools-rich-driving-city-water-crises‘
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1. Lots of people have cheap above ground pools in their back yards. But anyway, they should consider themselves as ‘rich’ and suitably slagged and chastised. I assume that they are all neoliberals and that, if they are Israelis, they eat christian babies. They are probably going to vote ‘No!’ on the Voice.
2. The more people you have, the more rich people you have, the more pools you have, the greater the probability that you have a ‘water crisis’ on your hands.
What is driving the ‘water crisis’ in all its myriad forms globally is that too many people want to do too much with a constrained resource.
There are fuck all swimming pools in the MDB and its hydrology has been shattered by clearing and irrigation. We export squillions of gigs of water in our ag and mineral exports. The revenue thus ‘earned’ is mainly spent to keep all the rich and the poor people in the cities going.
3. For all the myriad management failures, most aquifers in Australia are somewhat sustainably managed. Hundreds of millions of farmers in asia and africa are busy lowering water tables to a catastrophic extent. Not a swimming pool in sight.
It is getting like that Snappy Tom!
Boerwar @ #92 Tuesday, April 11th, 2023 – 9:42 am
And not having to be accountable. Not even the requirement to listen to someone you dont want to listen to.
Yeah I’m with Boerwar on this. Leave our swimming pools and spas alone.
From the Guardian blog.
Julian Leeser is due to give a press conference at 11am in Sydney. An alert went out this morning identifying Leeser as an MP, and not as the shadow minister for Indigenous Australians and shadow attorney general.
When we asked his office about this omission – they referred us to a statement he is expected to make at 10:30am on his Facebook. Sky News is reporting that Leeser will resign as shadow minister. It’s fair to say his resignation is expected – but we have not confirmed it.
malcolm @ #103 Tuesday, April 11th, 2023 – 9:50 am
Wasnt he the one who wanted to try to modernise Tibet? Even to the point of looking at welcoming some form of Chinese influence and involvement (in the early days at least).
I have no idea about the recent incident other than the headline and concern. I will note that culturally monks are very close. You would see them walking hand in hand, arm in arm around monasteries in remote parts of China.
malcolm says:
Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 10:20 am
The Dalai Lama says some wise things but sadly he is a representative of a medieval religious system from Tibet that kept Tibet stuck in the past and included accepted child abuse of child trainee monks by senior monks.
中华人民共和国
I had the chance to meet the Dalai Lama some years ago. Many were shocked when I turned it down. They were even more shocked when I explained that when he ruled Tibet slavery was practiced and slave sales routine, 95% of the population was illiterate and subjected to various forms of bondage, and dissenters routinely tortured and executed. His urine and faeces were considered holy and consumed (sold for a price).
The left love him because of his “new ageism” the right because of his “anti-communisim”.
Didn’t the Dalai Lama flee Tibet because of a failed CIA coup in 1959?
‘Andrew_Earlwood says:
Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 10:19 am
Boer, you seem to be under an illusion that the buyer is somehow compelled to keep buying our produce. Perhaps that’s how it worked when the main western export to the Middle Kingdom was opium, but I’m not sure that’s a sustainable business model these days. Perhaps another Peking Legation to put the stick about is in order. What! Perhaps a somewhat underemployed Marise Payne can lead it, and enter the forbidden city aside an elephant.’
——————————-
You seem to have a penchant for telling me what I think. And getting it wrong.
I have NEVER stated that a buyer is compelled to do anything at all. China was totally entitled to make hundreds of millions of it citizens freeze in their jocks because it wanted to teach Australia a coal hard lesson.
My point is that China does not give a fuck what Australia thinks about China, in any ethical sense.
It is all about power.
State-mandated trade punishments are, quite simply, about power. There are no rules here except never, ever apologize.
China has (is) deployed this power against Taiwan, Australia, South Korea and the Philippines.
While China was quietly working up its economic power Australia’s Two Hegemon Policy worked. China has now signalled quite clearly that Australia’s Two Hegemon Policy is past its use-by date.
The next biggie in this Two Hegemons Policy failure will inevitably occur when China gets its massive Africa-based iron ore pipelines up and running.
We will then not be able to afford any variation of the current sub purchase.
Didn’t have the Dalai Lama going full Mahatma Gandhi on my 2023 bingo card.
Leeser couldn’t keep up the pretence any more.
well I’ve never been a fan of the Dalai Lama, and I thank Jon Safran for alerting me to him:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kstH-8jwa80
‘Upnorth says:
Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 10:34 am
malcolm says:
Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 10:20 am
The Dalai Lama says some wise things but sadly he is a representative of a medieval religious system from Tibet that kept Tibet stuck in the past and included accepted child abuse of child trainee monks by senior monks.
中华人民共和国
I had the chance to meet the Dalai Lama some years ago. Many were shocked when I turned it down. They were even more shocked when I explained that when he ruled Tibet slavery was practiced and slave sales routine, 95% of the population was illiterate and subjected to various forms of bondage, and dissenters routinely tortured and executed. His urine and faeces were considered holy and consumed (sold for a price).
The left love him because of his “new ageism” the right because of his “anti-communisim”.’
————————————————–
Nice post, IMO.
‘citizen says:
Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 10:37 am
Leeser couldn’t keep up the pretence any more.
Leeser to quit over Liberals’ stance on voice
The opposition spokesman for Indigenous affairs becomes the second Liberal frontbencher to resign over the party’s position on the voice.
19 MINUTES AGO By ROSIE LEWIS (Oz)’
————————————-
I dips me lid to Leeser.
Julian Leeser is resigning from shadow cabinet.
@Upnorth – I have heard of all of these, but only from CCP-aligned sources. If, however, you got this information from an objective and neutral source, then I believe and agree with you.
Thanks BK, for the heads up.
Looks like Leeser might be man of some principles after all.
Hope he’s ready for the usual suspects to turn on him.
Perhaps Snappy Tom will come along and defend the Dalai Lama at some point.
Most people in the Uniting Church are probably more Buddhist than Christian at this point.
Lars Von Trier @ #115 Tuesday, April 11th, 2023 – 10:05 am
The Jewish space lasers just missed him as he ran over the mountains to safety.
If Leeser was the second, who was the first frontbencher to resign the ministry?
Wyatt does not count.
Boerwar says:
Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 10:38 am
‘citizen says:
Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 10:37 am
Leeser couldn’t keep up the pretence any more.
Leeser to quit over Liberals’ stance on voice
The opposition spokesman for Indigenous affairs becomes the second Liberal frontbencher to resign over the party’s position on the voice.
19 MINUTES AGO By ROSIE LEWIS (Oz)’
————————————-
I dips me lid to Leeser.
中华人民共和国
+1 Let’s hope others with a bit of ticker do the same
I dips me lid to Julian Leeser.
And there opens another crack!
Being shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs under Dutton is like being recruited to dig one’s own grave.
Who would willingly accept this position at the present time?
Drip…drip….drip….drip….
BK @ #129 Tuesday, April 11th, 2023 – 10:13 am
If it happened to an ALP opposition it would be a chasm that would dominate the press for weeks and haunt the opposition leader for many months.
citizen says:
Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 10:47 am
Being shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs under Dutton is like being recruited to dig one’s own grave.
Who would willingly accept this position at the present time?
中华人民共和国
Dutton may take the role himself. Try to “weaponise” the No campaign even more.
Which Moderate faction members remain now in the shadow cabinet?
Reading about the vaping “epidemic” in Australia. Vaping is illegal in Thailand but locals buy the stuff online and use them regularly. Foreigners caught with them are shaken down by the Royal Thai Police to look the other way – no coin – stint at the cop shop and possible fine.
This Vaping seems very trendy amongst the young people. Perhaps there needs to be an education campaign similar to Smoking and Sun Cancers?
Any thoughts on the next shadow AG? Is Michaelia still around?
Dutton is gonna install Jacinta Price as his Indigenous Affairs spokesperson isn’t he.
Just went to my local branch of the Commonwealth Bank. it’s closing in May. There are now no bank branches in my local shopping centre. Chifley was right…nationalize the bastards!
Of course China cares what Australia thinks.
They would have been beyond delighted when Xi was asked to address a joint sitting of our Parliament, and in that sitting, as Australia gave him one of our highest honors, he was pretty frank about what China wanted, and what up until then Australia had delivered in terms of a good faith trade partner with whom they’d just concluded a free trade agreement.
I think subsequently their annoyance when Rupert and the far right maniacs kicked off their anti-China hate campaign, which has been incredibly successful in attracting support in Australia, very much like the children overboard was, would have been a little tempered by the reality of Australia sticking its head out to be the whipping boy for the US. It was a free kick to China that gave China a way to demonstrate how it would respond to *checks notes* consistent racist attacks from idiot leaders of trading partners, without having to directly act against the US.
A case study for other trading partners with smarter leaders and less racist populations to take note of, and I’m sure they did, although being less stupid and less racist than Australia isn’t that hard to achieve, a lot of them would have achieved it anyway.
Rossmcgsays:
Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 10:40 am
Looks like Leeser might be man of some principles after all.
Hope he’s ready for the usual suspects to turn on him.
Leeser is making a play for Leeser.
Dutton is no chance regardless of the outcome of the voice.
Leeser has “walked to the crease” and “taken a line “on middle”.
Leeser is no moderate but he is a politician.
So Dutton’s former spokesman on legal matters Leeser reckons the Voice is legally sound.
Hardly surprising when he was one of the early architects of it.
Makes Dutton and his cheer squad look a bit silly when they keep saying the legal foundations built on sand.
Who, I wonder, will take over from Leeser. The talent pool is not even a shallow puddle.
“Just went to my local branch of the Commonwealth Bank. it’s closing in May. There are now no bank branches in my local shopping centre. Chifley was right…nationalize the bastards!”
Chiefly was always right, the High Court was always stomping on democracy, for the benefits of the elites.
A Sky News headline I saw last week proclaimed that Dutton was chipping away at the Albanese government. I’m savouring the memory.
Socrates
“ This Perun youtube presentation talks about the logic of military alliances. I like his logic and – provided the payoffs to each side are clear – you can even analyse the logic of alliances / agreements like AUKUS in this manner.”
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I haven’t listened to Perun’s podcast yet but more broadly speaking, ‘Twas always the case”. Alliances (particularly military) are compromises as with all relationships. The concept of neutrality or simply trade alliances are something most nations can ill afford in the event bad faith actors decide to invade. It appears that Finland and Sweden understand this necessity.
Whither Simon Birmingham, Marise Payne and Paul Fletcher? How many need to move to the backbench before Dutton is considered embattled?
“Wither” also works.
S. Simpson @ #137 Tuesday, April 11th, 2023 – 10:58 am
Let’s pretend for a second that he does this, it’d be hard to know which way that cuts. She speaks to the right of the party’s “principles”, and everyone outside of the LNP can see what she really is. But this is about the undecided and soft no’s/yeses.
How might Jacinta Price come across to that section of Australia? It might be a stroke of genius or just another sore foot from the quickly emptying gun PD has pointed at his feet.
Team Katich @ Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 11:09 am
“Whither Simon Birmingham….
“Wither” also works.
I’ll pay that 🙂
Starmer looks toxic.
https://skwawkbox.org/2023/04/10/starmer-asked-judge-to-hide-paedophiles-identity-and-leniency-of-sentence/
leftieBrawler @ #76 Tuesday, April 11th, 2023 – 9:55 am
Your obsession is showing. Again.