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.
Called it.
Julian Leeser first one.
There’ll be a few more.
Leeser resigns from the LNP opposition front bench.
Well done Dutto, we now have the not rats abandoning your sinking ship.
Dutton will appoint Price in a deliberate attempt to publicly wedge our indigenous brethren against each other. He will bring race relations to a new low. And why? To hang on to the trappings of opposition.
Worse still, he could take the position himself.
nath says:
Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 10:41 am
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.
____________
…and from nath, a “Seinfeld” post: about nothing.
Julian Lesser quits Opposition front bench over the Liberals’ opposition to the Voice:
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/australian-politics/2023/04/11/julian-leeser-frontbench-voice/?utm_campaign=News%20Alert%20-%2020230411&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Adestra&lr_hash=c9b069a37b22cc29c133bb7f8c2df445
Boerwar @ #84 Tuesday, April 11th, 2023 – 10:01 am
Sure you do, Boerwar. Just like C@t does. I hope leftie follows your lead soon – the place is a lot better for everyone when you people don’t monopolize the place with your nonsense 🙂
“Sure you do, Boerwar. Just like C@t does. I hope leftie follows your lead soon – the place is a lot better for everyone when you people don’t monopolize the place with your nonsense ”
I’m pretty sure the ‘same place’ is unreasonably and unfairly maligned by the self appointed ruling mean boys and girls, and I usually prefer to earn that response myself.
MABWM @ #152 Tuesday, April 11th, 2023 – 11:18 am
Would he need to take a cabinet position off the Nationals to make that work? Not sure any of them would give it up (cash in their personal pockets).
Jesus Christ- sounds like nath has been filling in his time on the big easy watching a Netflix mini series-good for him- and snappy Tom has continued his anti america/australia and pro XI, CCP,PRC, MG, BYD, Haiwee phones narratives lol.
south says:
Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 11:14 am
Called it.
Julian Leeser first one.
There’ll be a few more.
……………………………………………………………………………………..
98.6 says :
south has certainly ‘called it’, that Dutton and his lot are going ‘south’ at a great rate of knots.
Anyone else to quit the Liberal front bench?
Anyone else to quit the Liberal Party?
I’m sure many of you were sleeping and missed my brilliant plan for peace in Ukraine.
It occured to me while watching a BBC interview.
Ukraine and Russia agree to peace, and other than the capital all the cities and resources of Ukraine go to the Russians. Ukrainians get designated areas they are allowed to live, in fact are required to live, they will need Russian permission to move out of the designated area. The Ukrainians will be subject to random detainment and execution, and will be denied all legal rights. They of course will not be citizens in Ukraine.
Over time if Russia notices that there are valuable resources in the defined areas they are entitled to take those resources, and if Russia wants to settle people in the defined areas, including if they need to bulldoze the homes and communities of Ukrainians they will of course be allowed.
Any Ukrainians who are unhappy with this very generous settlement arrangement will be called terrorists and the international media will blame a kid throwing a small round pebble when Russia launches missiles into the villages of Ukrainians.
It seems very harsh to me but because so many here think it is the appropriate outcome for Palestinians and noone here is racist nor a hypocrite, I knew it would be embraced. And as Obama said if we can agree on this change in the little village that is pollbludger it can change the whole world, and what a fantastic solution, stable, fair and kind to all.
Steve777 says:
Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 11:29 am
Anyone else to quit the Liberal front bench?
Anyone else to quit the Liberal Party?
………………………………………………………………………
And the campaign proper hasn’t even started yet !
Julian Lesser is my local MP, rather proud of him this morning!
Simon Birmingham ought to resign next, let Dutton cobble together a shadow front bench out of the right wing kooks.
Predicting of course that the Murdoch press will now go after Lesser as will the knobends on Sky.
Rats who remain in the party are not abandoning a sinking ship.
They remain on board, just demoting themselves from officers to able seamen to avail themselves of the Nuremberg defense.
Steve777 @ #160 Tuesday, April 11th, 2023 – 11:29 am
I wonder how many are considering joining?
Mostly Interrsted- the Nats now find themselves subject to a newly anointed concept known as opposition in both Canberra and macq st.
Therefore, they can dole out “front bench” posts as they see fit because it means sweet fk all now they are in the wonderful irrelevance of the wilderness.
The former Nats leader and current member for New England could start appointing his daily deposits of alcohol-fuelled diarrhoea as newly minted shadow ministers for various new posts such as “shadow minister for more excessive primary producer tax breaks and subsides” etc etc and it wouldn’t mean a thing.
Could you imagine him dashing from his office suite toilet daily holding a new bag of each to the clerks’ office to have their appointments duly noted and recorded before a leak springs from the bags.
@William Bowe you mention the Valley of Death for elections extending until second half of 2024 but do not forget the Queensland LGA elections in March 2024. The top 3 LGAs by population in Australia will be going to the polls: Brisbane, Gold Coast and Moreton Bay Region. Logan, Sunshine Coast and Ipswich are also large LGAs.
Brisbane City LGA itself is home to more than 1 million constituents, features each of the three major parties in ward contests, and will be a great litmus test of the mood in South East Queensland going into the Queensland state election.
Will the tide go out on the LNP dominated council? Will it be a turning point in Coalition’s fortunes? Will the Greens make some significant pickups following their surprising Federal election performance? Many more questions stand in relation to these elections.
nath says:
Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 10:19 am
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.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
There was a lot of that sort of thing going on in Japan and seemed to be accepted if you believe what the ABCs Four Corners program showed last night.
Karen Andrews gets up and has a sniffy cry about the “appalling treatment” of Albo calling out Julian Leeser about his previous comments on “The Voice”.
Julian Leeser gets up at press conference and says nothing about Albo calling him out in parliament about it. All about how he has to follow his long held beliefs that this will be an improvement for Indigenous and Torres Straight Island peoples.
So who should we believe? The man himself who says its a personal position that he’s held for years or Karen Andrews having a cry that the government were legitimately asking questions of him why he was seeming to be prevericating about his position.
My conclusion. Karen Andrews has once more embarrassed herself.
Of course it’s all Labor’s fault!
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)
—————————————————
How unsurprisement. Now I’m waiting to hear about the party decision and briefing notes last week. Why aren’t 9News, ABC and guardian onto this?
Also how great is it that between the GFC showing us how badly trickle down has failed us, and covid 93% of the benefits of economic growth in Australia went to the already very wealthy, while for most workers real wages shrunk.
I’m sure the Government is cooking up a plan to tackle one of the most pressing issues in our society in its 10th or 11th term.
Lesser is just the entree, I posted last week about the goss my lib mate in the NSW directorate spilled to me about the the rumblings of many sitting small ‘l’ mps and others turfed last may that are in the preliminary stages of a formal break away initiative being steered by a certain former PM
Lesser doesn’t support Albo’s voice yeah? I’ve got that right? He supports a model that is even more watered down, and the voice isn’t to Parliament or the Executive? I guess in his model the voice is screaming into the void, a service pollbludger already offers many.
Name names, dammit!
Leeser was AG and Indigenous Affairs.
Bludgers would have noticed that Dutton and the Sky Cookers have been triangulating Alice Springs using Price as the lead singer. (Just as their predecessors triangulated indigenous education using Pearson as the lead singer. We would all recall Abbott the christian crusader glamping in Cape York.)
The plan is the same plan that went with doing a RC into Indigenous organizations during the referendum period: pour maximum shit on Indigenous individual leaders and on Indigenous organizations and on Indigenous communities. Howard was onto this same game plan. Remember how Australia had to send the army in because Indigenous communities were infested with pedophiles?
At least until the referendum day there will be a string of boot strappings, the point of which will be to show that Indigenous people are not fit even to voice their opinions. They will be portrayed as crooks, wife bashers, criminals, pedophiles, layabouts, chancers, and all the rest of it.
Price as lead singer for this triangulation band would be an ideal choice as Shadow Spokesperson for Indigenous Affairs. Like Pearson and like Wyatt, the Liberals will use her, foil her fondest dreams and then spit her out. The Liberals keep touting ‘practical’. They keep cutting hundreds of millions from Indigenous spending. How ‘practical’ is that? The Liberals are promising a ‘practical’ alternative. Where was that for the last decade?
After the referendum it would be far too late for Price to realize that she drank the Liberals’ kool aid and that she may have done irreparable harm.
As for Mundine…
WeWantPaul says:
Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 11:31 am
I’m sure many of you were sleeping and missed my brilliant plan for peace in Ukraine.
…’
—————
Yeah. The Israelis are going to stop eating christian babies and the Arabs are going to stop throwing jews down wells but only if pushing them into the sea is not a practical thing.
It should work.
Hadley had Mundine on his show both trying to attack the ‘YES’ case for the VOICE.
If I was someone who was going to make my mind up from listening to their explanations, I would now be voting YES.
It was the most juvenile attempt from both of them.
They both said they basically agree with the proposals of the VOICE but want us to vote NO.
It was embarrassing to listen to them.
“Yeah. The Israelis are going to stop eating christian babies and the Arabs are going to stop throwing jews down wells but only if pushing them into the sea is not a practical thing.”
That wasn’t my point at all sweetie, nor is it a rational extrapolation of my point, perhaps you need to read my post again. Concentrate on the hypocrisy and racist bits. I mean sound out all the words and try and build all the sentences, but those ones are key when you get there.
WeWantPaul
I’m sure many of you were sleeping and missed my brilliant plan for peace in Ukraine.
Sort of. Reading your “brilliant plan” made me fall asleep. It definitely skewed to polemical/preachy.
“Sort of. Reading your “brilliant plan” made me fall asleep. It definitely skewed to polemical/preachy.”
Yeah I can see how it would be a struggle for you to understand that and connect the links. Sleeping is probably a good response on your part. Waking and up posting about it, well seems foolish.
‘WeWantPaul says:
Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 11:54 am
“Yeah. The Israelis are going to stop eating christian babies and the Arabs are going to stop throwing jews down wells but only if pushing them into the sea is not a practical thing.”
That wasn’t my point at all sweetie, …’
———————-
True. But it WAS my point, darling…
Leeser’s move today is the beginning of the end for Dutton.
“True. But it WAS my point, darling…”
You point wasn’t very good, it was terrible racist stereotypes unrelated to the innate contradiction that made my little homily so much fun.
There is just no good answer to why Palestinians fighting occupation are terrorists and Ukrainians are heros. No good answer at all, and yours wasn’t’ even on the terrible answer but shows they understand the problem field.
Sammut the Prince of Point Piper is pulling all the strings behind closed doors- and good on him for doing it.
The ALP national exec was always worried and perplexed as to how in the hell it could ever strategise to topple a universally liked small l prime minister that enjoyed support among even many Labor voters due to his social , climate and environmental policies and views.
The last time I had spoken to little brother of the dynasty and the 2022 teal whisperer he didn’t sound overly bullish or confident about repeating it in the NSW election just past.
The prince of PP was closely analysing the March state election and with the failure of the teals and the gradual withdrawal from little brother as the chief teal bank roller he sensed a vacuum and thus the long theorised talk of a formal split discussed between him and the mps that both remain and fell last may was finally activated. He has the means, ego and the spite fuelled motivation to see this plan into fruition.
We should thank little brother for creating the teal movement initially and now the Prince will take over and run with it and I hope he is successful.
How’s Dutton’s party unification going? 😆
I posted the other day that it is likely that social media networks are already infested by AI. I should have realized this was not a very original thought – this article reckons up to 15% of twitter accounts, and about 20% of all political discussion during the last presidential election were in fact by ‘bots’ …
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/henry-farrell-philip-k-dick-and-fake-humans/
Interestingly, one function of these ‘bots’ is to “degrade particular kinds of conversation” – presumably those conversations that their controllers don’t want people to be having.
I wondered at the time if PB was already infected. It would certainly explain a few of the more …. umm … shall we say “prolific” … posters here, whose primary function appears to be to degrade the quality of critical debate.
Even without the AI aspect, there is presumably a Godwin-like law operating here – i.e. the longer a political debate goes on, the closer the probability approaches 1.0 that someone will get personally abusive in a deliberate attempt to degrade the debate or shut it down entirely.
There is at the very least a PhD in this for someone. William, perhaps?
Karen Andrews says Albanese treated Leeser badly in the parliament.
Who suggested Leeser ask dumb questions in Parliament like would the Voice be able to give advice to the RBA governor?
Talk about leading with your chin.
In some circles Andrews was touted as leadership material before she passed and Ley got the deputy gig.
The pair of them do a good line in fake outrage and not much else though I think Andrews’ anger at Morrison for appointing himself Home Affair Minister without telling her is real.
From The OZ
“ Julian Leeser’s resignation from the Coalition frontbench has dealt a damaging blow to Peter Dutton and his ability to maintain a unified party position in opposing the voice to parliament and executive government.”
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=TAWEB_WRE170_a&dest=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theaustralian.com.au%2Fcommentary%2Fthe-risk-for-dutton-will-leesers-departure-have-a-domino-effect%2Fnews-story%2Fb1596bc49a2c149e9cec959c5d9b9e2f&memtype=anonymous&mode=premium&v21=dynamic-groupb-control-noscore&V21spcbehaviour=append
His resignation would be the end of Dutton. One thing for one shadow minister to jump, but a second? Which makes me say – no chance. He doesnt have the ticker for that. A very specialised politician is our Birmo. He has found his cranny and I doubt he will crawl out from under that until he finds another rock to attach to.
In fact, I reckon he might be the one rolled out to window dress Dutton re Leeser’s resignation.
Come on, Birmo – prove me wrong.
”
98.6says:
Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 11:41 am
nath says:
Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 10:19 am
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.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
There was a lot of that sort of thing going on in Japan and seemed to be accepted if you believe what the ABCs Four Corners program showed last night
”
Since we have AUKUS deal let us start insulting Asian countries and their religions. US is our protector. US will save us from their aggression.
Menzies must have thought like this after signing ANZUS deal.
I read somewhere in his second stint as PM , Menzies flew over Asia to go to Mother country to meet the queen.
Player one you sound like the kid who takes his bat and ball and the stumps after he gets out by the other kids on the block.
Except in your case it’s a well to do woman who made a fortune in Sydney over decades in very NOT- environmentally friendly sectors to amass the wealth to move down to the south coast and become a hypocrite at the helm of your eco friendly resort.
Team Katich @ #190 Tuesday, April 11th, 2023 – 12:11 pm
I see this as Birmo’s last chance to show that has any skerrick of personal integrity. For the record I don t think he does, in fact I’d say he is one the most feeble spined politicians out there, he is nothing but an enabler of the worst kind.
”
ParkySPsays:
Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 11:42 am
Karen Andrews gets up and has a sniffy cry about the “appalling treatment” of Albo calling out Julian Leeser about his previous comments on “The Voice”.
Julian Leeser gets up at press conference and says nothing about Albo calling him out in parliament about it. All about how he has to follow his long held beliefs that this will be an improvement for Indigenous and Torres Straight Island peoples.
So who should we believe? The man himself who says its a personal position that he’s held for years or Karen Andrews having a cry that the government were legitimately asking questions of him why he was seeming to be prevericating about his position.
My conclusion. Karen Andrews has once more embarrassed herself.
”
Female federal Liberal party MPs/Senators are taking this “Albanese is a bully schtick” to ridiculous limits. Probably guilty conscience or Projection which they are good at.
Oh and can you all f#@k off with the personal attacks on each other, it’s so f#@ken puerile and painful to watch you drag down one of the few left leaning, long lasting blogs where real policy is discussed.
”
mundosays:
Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 11:35 am
Steve777 @ #160 Tuesday, April 11th, 2023 – 11:29 am
Anyone else to quit the Liberal front bench?
Anyone else to quit the Liberal Party?
I wonder how many are considering joining?
”
Rumour has it that One Nation and Palmer UAP members have applied to join Liberal party. 🙂
A senior Liberal frontbencher has urged the Albanese government to reject a potential request for a massive Commonwealth bailout for Victoria. The state’s May budget is set to reveal the eye-watering costs of the world’s longest lockdowns and continued COVID-19 aftershocks crippling the state.
Victoria’s debt is currently sitting at $115.6 billion but is expected to balloon out to a mammoth $165.4 billion by 2025-26, representing almost a quarter of its gross state product. But ahead of the Federal Budget on May 9, the Andrews government is petitioning its Commonwealth counterpart for additional financial assistance, according to the Australian Financial Review.
Manager of Opposition Business Paul Fletcher however strongly rubbished the potential move declaring the federal government’s finances could not afford a bail out of the country’s second largest economy. “Let’s see some discipline on the spending side.”
leftieBrawler @ #193 Tuesday, April 11th, 2023 – 12:13 pm
It was unnecessary, but thank you for demonstrating my theory.