Weekend miscellany: The case of the disappearing preselection challenges (open thread)

Sussan Ley off the hook in Farrer, and Jane Hume thinks better of a bid for promotion on the Victorian Liberal Senate ticket.

Aside from developments in the Indigenous Voice referendum, covered in the post above, there are two developments to relate on the federal preselection front:

• Samantha Maiden at news.com.au reports Liberal deputy leader Sussan Ley will be spared a preselection challenge in her seat of Farrer after her challenger, Jean Haynes, was rejected by the party’s nomination review committee and suspended from the party for 90 days. The reasons behind this are unclear, but it comes after “a tit for tat round of expulsion motions in the Deniliquin branch of the party” that “included attempts to expel a group of party veterans who are loyal supporters of Sussan Ley, some of whom are women in the 70s and 80s who have given up to 50 years of service to the party”. Christian Ellis, who sought to challenge Ley’s preselection before the last election, has been expelled for bringing the party into disrepute shortly after pleading guilty to a firearm charge, with no conviction recorded. Contrary to other reports, Maiden relates that Ley “was expected to trounce challenger Haynes with over 70 per cent of the vote”.

• Rachel Baxendale of The Australian reports that Victorian Liberal Senator Jane Hume has abandoned a short-lived bid to elevate herself from second to first place on the Coalition ticket at the next election, amid conservative threats of retaliation by backing Greg Mirabella to take second position, potentially reducing Hume to third. Mirabella has recently relinquished his position as the party’s state president to pursue the third position, from which he unsuccessfully sought re-election last year. As Paul Sakkal of The Age described it, Hume’s move “pits her moderate wing against the Victorian Right faction led by figures including Paterson and lower house MP Michael Sukkar”. Hume owed her second position at the 2019 election to intervention by Scott Morrison that saw off conservative-backed challenger Karina Okotel.

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.

865 comments on “Weekend miscellany: The case of the disappearing preselection challenges (open thread)”

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  1. Catching up with the RC into mental health cases treatment in the ADF, there wee some sorry cases heard today.

    Sadly, they give an overall impression consistent with that some friends who are former ADF members have given me.

    That is of an ADF with destroyed morale from two decades of war on terror and border policing operations against refugees. This is combined with an out of touch leadership more interested in their careers and performance metrics than troops’ welfare. ADF leadership needs to be held to account over their failed duty of care for welfare ASAP.
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-28/royal-commission-defence-veteran-suicide-mother-testifies/102784426

    No wonder recruiting fails to meet targets, retention is a problem, and the ADF has hardly expanded in strength for a decade despite budgeting for expansion. Marles needs to deal with the human problems in the ADF almost as much as the material acquisition problem.

    NB this is not a criticism of enlisted, OR or junior officer ranks. IMO they have been let down.

  2. im glad naf thinks a person who has dissapeared from the media since last year was a senyor advisor to aligzander downer between 2001 and 2006 was backed buy dutton and the right against petro Georgiou in 2006 tried to save kevin andrews from preselection defeat is close friends with right wingers Crodger and sukkar is going to return to parliament

  4. ItzaDream at 8.13 pm

    The problem with that Guardian story on Voice polling is that it is based largely on the last Essential poll, with a national sample of 1150, which means any breakdowns within it are rather dubious. See:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2023_Australian_Indigenous_Voice_referendum#cite_note-3

    That site has a list of all known polls, including the much larger sample internal Labor poll in July. Until Dr Bonham rules that poll out as dubious, it remains important due to its very large sample.

  5. Aaron newton says:
    Monday, August 28, 2023 at 8:47 pm

    im glad naf thinks a person who has dissapeared from the media since last year was a senyor advisor to aligzander downer between 2001 and 2006 was backed buy dutton and the right against petro Georgiou in 2006 tried to save kevin andrews from preselection defeat is close friends with right wingers Crodger and sukkar is going to return to parliament
    _____
    I’m not 100% sure what this stream of consciousness is about but it seems directed at me. I’m not sure how to respond because I don’t know what the point of it is.

  6. Frydenburg’s calculation will be:

    – this is at least a 2 term Albanese government
    – I may get returned in Kooyong, if enough paint gets stripped off Labor
    – the QLD copper will never build a winning consensus, though he may need to be dynamited out
    – maybe build to a challenge mid term – say December 2027 after a string of disastrous polls for Spud
    – offer tax breaks, middle class giveaways and localised pork as Opposition Leader in the 2028 election

    What could possibly go wrong?

  7. laz wwhat abbout bob katter despite his mavrick image he is actualy a corear politician and parrt of a dynast his father was a federal mp for decades then he entered state parliament in 1973 was a minister in the ceruptqld nats government was only junior then a few years after his fathers retirement entered federal parliament plus his son is in qld parliament to eventualy ttake over the seat most likely and has achieved littlein his decades in parliament

  8. If Frydenberg wants to return to Parliament via the lower house in a Victorian seat, he might have a better chance of it by running for Monash than going for another round in Kooyong. Monash’s current member Russell Broadbent is 72 and will be 74 at the next election.

    While Monash’s current margin is only 53-47 to the Liberals against Labor, there’s a redistribution coming up that could change that. But then again that comes with all the risks of attempting to parachute in a high profile candidate at the cost of the locals’ choice, that hasn’t gone well in either side of politics lately.

  10. If it’s true that Labor voters are more intelligent than Liberal voters, can you imagine Liberal leaning comment threads!

  11. Eston Kohver at 8.47 pm

    And the problem for Mrs Kallas, Estonia’s PM, is what? Is there no hypocrisy in Estonia? However, get an opinion from Dr Bonham before you describe electronic voting as smart.

    Remember good old Malcolm Fraser. He cut off cultural exchanges to the USSR in a futile response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but continued to sell them Australian wheat, reportedly from his farm.

    It took three years under the Hawke government before such exchanges were re-negotiated, with the result that I was the first postgrad student from ANU to benefit from such an exchange to the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow, just as glasnost’ got going in 1987. They insisted on paying me a full Professor’s salary in Russian roubles, which was hard to spend, until I worked out fairly quickly that international phone calls from Moscow back to Australia could be paid for in roubles.

  12. Dr Doolittlesays:
    Monday, August 28, 2023 at 8:47 pm
    ItzaDream at 8.13 pm
    That site has a list of all known polls, including the much larger sample internal Labor poll in July. Until Dr Bonham rules that poll out as dubious, it remains important due to its very large sample.
    _____________________
    Internal Labor poll.
    As dubious as all hell would be my take on it.

  13. Today we had Alan Joyce in front of parliament reminding everyone why everyone hates Qantas.

    I think it’s an indication of the naïveté of the Yes campaign that they actually believe they benefit when their cause is publicly taken up by an unpopular corporation that specialises in ripping people off.

  15. Dr Doolittle says:
    I was the first postgrad student from ANU to benefit from such an exchange to the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow, just as glasnost’ got going in 1987.
    _______
    In the 80s, I was chosen, along with a handful of other Primary School students across Melbourne to learn the Russian language and culture in an advanced setting. For what purpose? I couldn’t tell you.
    Whether we were to be trained as spies or diplomats I cannot say. Where this program originated, I don’t know.

    My involvement lasted only a few months. For, although I tested in the top 1% of all Primary School students in some test they handed out, my gift for languages was poor.

  19. ‘Kirsdarke says:
    Monday, August 28, 2023 at 8:55 pm

    If Frydenberg wants to return to Parliament via the lower house in a Victorian seat, he might have a better chance of it by running for Monash than going for another round in Kooyong. Monash’s current member Russell Broadbent is 72 and will be 74 at the next election.

    While Monash’s current margin is only 53-47 to the Liberals against Labor, there’s a redistribution coming up that could change that. But then again that comes with all the risks of attempting to parachute in a high profile candidate at the cost of the locals’ choice, that hasn’t gone well in either side of politics lately.’
    —————————
    Broadbent would have a significant personal vote.

  20. ‘Socrates says:
    Monday, August 28, 2023 at 8:46 pm

    Catching up with the RC into mental health cases treatment in the ADF, there wee some sorry cases heard today.

    Sadly, they give an overall impression consistent with that some friends who are former ADF members have given me.

    That is of an ADF with destroyed morale from two decades of war on terror and border policing operations against refugees. This is combined with an out of touch leadership more interested in their careers and performance metrics than troops’ welfare. ADF leadership needs to be held to account over their failed duty of care for welfare ASAP.
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-28/royal-commission-defence-veteran-suicide-mother-testifies/102784426

    No wonder recruiting fails to meet targets, retention is a problem, and the ADF has hardly expanded in strength for a decade despite budgeting for expansion. Marles needs to deal with the human problems in the ADF almost as much as the material acquisition problem.

    NB this is not a criticism of enlisted, OR or junior officer ranks. IMO they have been let down.’
    ————————————
    The Civil has considerable accountability for this sad state of affairs.

  22. ”
    Socratessays:
    Monday, August 28, 2023 at 8:46 pm
    Catching up with the RC into mental health cases treatment in the ADF, there wee some sorry cases heard today.

    Sadly, they give an overall impression consistent with that some friends who are former ADF members have given me.

    That is of an ADF with destroyed morale from two decades of war on terror and border policing operations against refugees. This is combined with an out of touch leadership more interested in their careers and performance metrics than troops’ welfare. ADF leadership needs to be held to account over their failed duty of care for welfare ASAP.
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-28/royal-commission-defence-veteran-suicide-mother-testifies/102784426

    No wonder recruiting fails to meet targets, retention is a problem, and the ADF has hardly expanded in strength for a decade despite budgeting for expansion. Marles needs to deal with the human problems in the ADF almost as much as the material acquisition problem.

    NB this is not a criticism of enlisted, OR or junior officer ranks. IMO they have been let down.
    ”

    +1

  23. BW, I think Frydenberg would bring a pretty strong personal vote to Monash too. It’s not like he would be a freshman replacement.

  24. Socrates
    Why would anyone join the army when the “powers to be” send them off to get killed in dubious conflicts? It will take decades for people to forget and they will only forget if the “power to be” stop it. Pretty advertisements won’t solve the problem.

  26. People join the military for lots of different reasons. Fear of getting sent somewhere to fight seems to be low on the list of cons from the military people I’ve known. Culture seems to a much harder issue to resolve.

  27. The “Yes” vote is supported by a raft of businesses, organisations and individuals – including today Julie Bishop who very correctly refers to the reputation of Australia and Australians if the “Yes” vote does not prevail and easily prevail

    On the other side, promoting the “No” case is who?

    We saw the answer to that question at a Conference addressed by Abbott and others the other weekend

    In regards Frydenberg being parachuted into a seat, to become prime minister no less, the problem is the control of the branches and if that control vests with the Pentecostal God botherer’s, noting the leadership tensions between the Pentecostals and the IPA in Victoria with another Pentecostal in the Party Room via Warrandyte

    The last leadership challenge resulted in a 1 vote margin

  29. Dailykos:
    Will Bunch/Philadelphia Inquirer:

    Journalism fails miserably at explaining what is really happening to America

    Momentous week of GOP debate, Trump’s arrest gets ‘horse race’ coverage when the story’s not about an election but authoritarianism.

    They stood on an arena stage in Milwaukee under a massive sign that read “Democracy” — the metaphorical 800-pound gorilla that loomed over this strange political event but was never really discussed. When the dust finally settled after two hours of the first televised debate of the 2024 GOP primaries, nothing — from the rude kids-table outbursts from the impertinent Vivek Ramaswamy to the doomed efforts by Nikki Haley or Mike Pence to be the grown-ups in the room — actually mattered inside the airy Fiserv Forum except for one thing.

    All those not-so-wonderful people out there in the dark. A mob that raged, and which ultimately ruled.

    This audience seemed to only care about The Man Who Wasn’t There — Donald Trump, who was too busy refueling his private jet for his next arrest to bother attending. The restive crowd reached its peak when its bête noire, the anti-Trump turncoat Chris Christie, dared try to challenge Ramaswamy’s outburst that POTUS 45 “was the best president of the 21st century.” It filled the basketball arena with boos.

  31. Also there’s the matter of Liberal party factions. Both Broadbent and Frydenberg seem to be in the ‘moderate’ faction so it would probably go over smoothly if Broadbent retired and endorsed Frydenberg as his successor, although I don’t know of their personal relationship, it seems to be either tolerate-or-hate when it comes to personalities in the Liberals.

  32. Socrates at 3.05 pm + Sunday at 8.20 am and A_E later that day

    Thanks for the link to the story about the Roggeveen book. Here are the key passages at the story’s end:

    ‘Roggeveen says policymakers are right to worry about China’s military growth, but thinks the risk of Beijing attacking Australia has been massively overstated. That is, unless we poke the dragon so much that we antagonise it – including by allowing Americans to fly operational missions from northern Australia.

    “Our geography is our single biggest defence asset, yet we’re effectively trying to compress the distance between us and China with this focus on long-range weapons and particularly nuclear-powered submarines. If at any point China wants to project military force in Australia, unlikely as that is, well let them come towards us. I don’t think there’s any need for us to go towards them.”

    Ultimately, he says the book’s premise is a hopeful one. “Australia can defend itself against the might of the People’s Liberation Army, even without American help, and it doesn’t need to bankrupt us,” he argues.’

    The reason for the last point is basic but has been assumed away in much of the public discussion. The reason is that the Chinese leadership has so many problems much closer to home that there is no way that they could, in a relevant time period of decades, develop an intention to attack Australia. That is a scenario that is so far from reality in terms of its assumptions as to be ridiculous.

    Michael MccGwire, in his writings about the USSR during the Cold War, warned about what he called the colonel’s fallacy, which is reflected in dubious attempts at strategic analysis by extrapolating only in a pre-determined way from objective capabilities, while disregarding the key factor of intentions.

    Putin makes the point obvious in his blundering way. Without entrenched hostility towards Ukraine in Russia manufactured by Putin and his gang, Russian military capabilities were not a major problem.

    We could have an informed discussion about Chinese military spending and capabilities. I believe that SIPRI has better analysts who are capable of discerning what such spending is really about with more accuracy than the experts at IISS in London. Deciphering such spending is not simple, because China is not an open society like the US, where military spending is publicly institutionalised, partly since it serves in a rather perverted way as a form of what Varoufakis calls surplus recycling, i.e. spending that the US government directs toward areas of the US economy that otherwise would be in chronic deficit.

    However, real strategic analysis requires assessing not merely aggregate military spending and actual capabilities, but also credible intentions. Analysis of the latter aspect may be harder but it is essential.

    For the difficulty of assessing what Chinese military spending actually is, see this recent SIPRI report:

    https://www.sipri.org/publications/2021/other-publications/new-estimate-chinas-military-expenditure

  34. Monash isn’t Frydenberg’s type of area because his ideal seat would cover Toorak and the AEC could slip the eastern half of Stonnington into Kooyong.

  35. Bystander @ #760 Monday, August 28th, 2023 – 8:07 pm

    Player Onesays:
    Monday, August 28, 2023 at 7:11 pm
    Labour should stand up for Indigenous Australians, and declare that even if the Voice referendum fails, they will still pursue the other aspects of the Uluru Statement, as they have promised.

    That is what Sir Humphrey of ‘Yes Minister’ fame would have described as ‘very courageous’. In other words it would be electoral suicide.

    Was this a lie? …

    https://www.lindaburney.com.au/media-releases/2020/11/9/labor-supports-uluru-statement-in-full-naidoc-2020

    Labor’s position on the Uluru Statement is rock solid. Labor’s position is that we support a constitutionally enshrined voice to the parliament. That has not changed. We support the establishment of a Makarrata Commission, which will have the responsibility for agreement and treaty making. And that’s very much part of Labor’s position. We also support a national process for Truth-Telling. So ‘Voice, Treaty, Truth’ is what Labor believes in and our position on the Uluru Statement is absolutely rock solid. It seems to me that the only political party in Australia that fully supports the Uluru Statement is in fact the Labor Party.

  37. Pisays:
    Monday, August 28, 2023 at 9:44 pm
    Kooyong isn’t Frydenbergs type of area anymore either.
    ———————
    It is on paper.

  38. Washington: Americans actually agree on something in this time of raw discord: Joe Biden is too old to be an effective president in a second term. Only a few years his junior, Donald Trump raises strikingly less concern about his age.

    But they have plenty of other problems with Trump, who at least for now far outdistances his rivals for the Republican nomination despite his multiple criminal indictments. Never mind his advanced years – if anything, some say, the 77-year-old ought to grow up.

    This is where bring a 300 lard arse makes you look younger … on TV

    They are both way too old

  39. Frednk

    Agreed. I have some older friends my own age who served in the Solomons and East Timor without regret. East Timor needed protecting and, despite Downer betraying them on the oil deal, they helped a new nation start. No regrets there.

    Whereas for the next generation of ADF recruits Afghanistan and Iraq were quite different. What is worse than being sent to a conflict where you or mates might get killed? Doing it in a war you soon realise is unwinnable and irrelevant. That hurts morale badly. The lives lost are wasted. And it dragged on for two decades.

    Likewise Operation “Sovereign Borders” was demoralising for the navy. They soon realised most of the refugees were genuine. After that it was two or three pretty depressing years floating around the Timor Sea, knowing you were just props in a political strategy. Only the careerist cynics relished that.

  41. Mexicanbeemer at 9.39 pm

    Frydenburg has in the past, according to David Rowe’s imagination, adapted to the lower end of town.

    See the cartoon about the pair of strolling fraudsters displaying their mullets at:

  42. Pisays:
    Monday, August 28, 2023 at 9:55 pm
    Pi: “Kooyong isn’t Frydenbergs type of area anymore either.”

    Mexb: “It is on paper.”

    Not on voting paper.
    ——————-
    The Liberals will fancy their chances in Kooyong and the AEC will probably push the seat south into Glen Iris or Malvern/Toorak. Glen Iris would suit Ryan after the ALP easily held the overlapping state seat of Ashwood.

  43. Dr Doolittle

    Thanks for the SIPRI report link, which I will read.

    As a matter of fact I just ordered some books this afternoon including Roggeveens’. Understanding China’s genuine intentions and strategy is as you say much harder than counting ships and dollars.

    Understanding intentions certainly isn’t easy for the ADF either, whose policy documents seem to me notoriously vague motherhood statements that could be used to justify anything. They leave me wondering if their authors actually have a coherent picture of defending Australia?

    At first consideration I am finding myself much in agreement with Roggeveen.

    You would already recall the economic and engineering suspicions I have expressed over AUKUS. In many defence asset categories we are choosing the most expensive weapons possible, yet in such small numbers they are either not built or not cost effective.

    This leaves us with a small, costly high-tech “boutique” defence force that is capable of little else other than operating alongside larger US forces equipped to the same standard. And all this ignores the absurd delivery timeframes.

    So if AUKUS is not about defending Australia, only alliances and geo-political motives seem left. Yet if that is the motive, why spend so much money buying favour with the UK, which has less capability to defend Australia from afar now than it did when Singapore fell.

  44. Socrates at 9.50 pm

    Yes, and who let those soldiers and sailors down by sending them to unnecessary wars for Australia?

    Obviously it was the pollies. But how much real debate was allowed within the bureaucracy about the big issue of whether those wars and operations were justified? Very little, if any. Some years after the Afghan War started Hugh White expressed the opinion that it was pointless, but I doubt that he said that when he was a senior bureaucrat in Defence.

    There was one phrase in the story by Matthew Knott about the Roggeveen book that was quite absurd.

    He referred to an imaginary non-entity called the “defence intelligentsia”. The origin of the term intelligentsia is in Tsarist Russia (including Finland) where it referred broadly to those intellectuals committed to a public critique of their state. Not just military bureaucrats, but most people who comment in Australia on military policy are a world away from an intelligentsia, because the last thing on their mind would be to believe that the practice of the state they serve deserves a critique.

  45. Dr Doolittle

    Sorry I just managed to write a response to your 10:12 pm post then delete it while editing.

    No matter, it was only adding anecdotes in support of points in your post.

  46. Socrates at 10.05 pm

    “So if AUKUS is not about defending Australia, only alliances and geo-political motives seem left.”

    I’m afraid you are too generous regarding the intentions of the fathers of AUKUS. They (Morrison and Albo) have never shown the slightest interest in strategic policy, although, to be fair, before he finally became Opposition Leader Albo had expressed a genuine belief that Australia should ratify the Nuclear Prohibition Treaty. I attended a rally organised by ICAN (the International Campaign against Nuclear Weapons) outside Parliament House in September 2018 at which Albo was the key speaker. He left the audience in no doubt that he would urge a future Labor government to ratify that important treaty.

    AUKUS originated as a hunch in the form of a political wedge, designed by ProMo Morrison on the run as was his style. Albo supported it within 24 hours, without any written rationale, to dodge the wedge.

    Subsequently the top brass in Defence have defended AUKUS like rabid monarchists protecting their King from imaginary threats (there are non-rabid monarchists like Michael Kirby but that’s an aside).

    AUKUS is a way of tying Australia closer to the Pentagon’s policy in East Asia, but it is not essential for a continuation of the US alliance, simply because very few people of influence critique the alliance.

    As for geo-political motives, if they are real they would need to be specified. Anti-China rhetoric does not meet the definition of a geo-political motive.

    This really is the point of Allam Behm’s whimsical article. He said AUKUS is not strategy but politics, and narrow-minded defensive domestic politics at that. Note his words:

    “What the US President and the Prime Ministers of Australia and Great Britain have announced is a game changer. But it is not defence policy, and it is not a defence plan. What has happened is great political theatre with deep domestic political significance.”

    https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/aukus-submarines-on-the-never-never-or-castles-in-the-sky/

    As for why the Defence Strategic Review, authored by the US apologist Professor Dean, does not have what you called “a coherent picture of defending Australia”, the reason is simple. The document was not designed as a fundamental review starting from first principles, along the lines recommended by Hugh White for how genuine strategic policy should be formulated. It was not an attempt to formulate defence policy in genuine terms, i.e. by examining credible threats, but merely a political exercise.

    See: https://johnmenadue.com/the-defence-strategic-review-a-tainted-report/

    People may have different opinions about John Menadue’s blog, but he has great bureaucratic and also diplomatic experience (he was Ambassador to Japan). He knows a fake review when he sees one.

  47. Socrates at 10.37 pm

    At least we can do that here without worrying who has been spying in the ether, unlike Russia or China.

  48. Dr Doolittle

    Thanks. Yes of course I left out domestic politics as the real explanation.

    In fact I suspect another even baser short term political motive for Morrison.

    Cancelling the Attack class sub build for a decades away SSN “alternative” saved $2 billion a year from the budget (construction was due to kick off in 2022).

    By 2021 the LNP held one seat in Adelaide (Sturt) so the loss of money for SA cost the LNP nothing politically.

    Whereas the saved funds might have helped make those already printed “Back in Black” mugs finally come true. Either that, or more funds for pork elsewhere.

    And that still leaves lobbying by BAE and Lockheed Martin. Night all.

  49. It’s amazing how many people can’t see Alan Joyce for the conservative he is. That’s the power of stereotypes, people can’t see past his orientation to see that he’s still a rich person trying to avoid taxes, a corporate highflyer maximising profits over valuing customers, exploiting causes purely for perceived profit to the business’ bottom line. A moderate conservative, sure, but still a conservative.

  50. Aaron newton says:
    Monday, August 28, 2023 at 8:26 pm
    would the average voter even remember who Frydenberg was as treasurer he was not egzacktly high profile the only time he was praised was he made a anti dan andrews rant he has disappeared unlike Crodger has not kept up a media profile is not a comentator on sky news no interviews plus dutton was defacto deputy when morrison was pm with barnabey joice and even gregg hunt having a higher profile then frydenberg it was a pandemick
    ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
    I agree Aaron, While I know some treasurers go on to be PMs, I never saw Joshie as one of them.
    He always came across to me as a tosser.
    But hey, I believed Shorten would become PM in 2019.
    I still believe Shorten will become PM !
    Maybe around 2028 when he turns 61.

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