Thursday miscellany: Greens and Liberal Senate vacancies, etc. (open thread)

Victorian Greens Senator Janet Rice to call it a day, Warren Mundine withdraws from contention to replace Marise Payne, and Josh Frydenberg confirms he will sit out the next election.

Apart from a few Indigenous Voice snippets, which I’m holding back for a dedicated post, the only polling action this week has been the regular Roy Morgan result, which has Labor leading 54-46, unchanged on last week, from primary votes of Labor 32.5% (up half), Coalition 35% (up half) and Greens 14% (down one-and-a-half). On the preselection front, there is the following to relate:

• Victorian Greens Senator Janet Rice has announced she will retire from parliament in the first half of next year. James Massola of The Age reports her successor will be chosen by a vote of 2000 to 3000 party members in November. The front-runner is Steph Hodgins-May, who has run three times for the party in Macnamara (known as Melbourne Ports up to 2016) and came within an ace of winning the seat in 2022. Other potential nominees are Monash councillor Josh Fergeus, academic and unionist Apsara Sabaratnam and lawyer Sarah Jefford.

• With Warren Mundine’s withdrawal last week from the preselection race to fill Marise Payne’s New South Wales Liberal Senate vacancy, the position is now thought likely to go to Andrew Constance, former state government minister and unsuccessful candidate for Gilmore at last year’s federal election. However, the Sydney Morning Herald reports he may face competition from one of a number of factional conservatives: “Mina Zaki, an Afghanistan-born, anti-Taliban activist and cyber expert at consulting firm KPMG; barrister Ishita Sethi; lawyer Pallavi Sinha; Monica Tudehope, who has previously worked as Dominic Perrottet’s policy director; and former NSW Liberal MP Lou Amato”. Mundine has opted to remain in the business sector, but the Sydney Morning Herald further noted he had “caused angst” among hitherto supportive conservatives by defying the no campaign line on the desirability of a treaty or a changed date for Australia Day. The Sydney Morning Herald earlier reported the preselection was not likely to be determined until November.

• Josh Frydenberg announced last week he will not seek to win Kooyong back from teal independent Monique Ryan at the next election. Rachel Baxendale of The Australian says this has left Liberals questioning who might take over as leader if circumstances demand it after the next election, with Andrew Hastie “described by several as the party’s best hope, despite his relative inexperience”. Amelia Hamer, director of strategy at tech start-up Airwallex, has been mentioned as a likely contender for the Liberal preselection in Frydenberg’s absence, while a report in The Age put forward a number of familiar names as potential starters: “Lucas Moon, an anti-pokies campaigner at Hawthorn RSL, Melbourne councillor Roshena Campbell, former candidate Georgina Downer, Caroline Elliot, or past Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chair Karyn Sobels”.

Alexi Diemetriadi of The Australian reports Hunters Hill mayor Zac Miles has resigned from the Liberal state executive ahead of a run for Liberal preselection in Bennelong, and that Shoalhaven councillor and former deputy mayor Paul Ell is “understood” to be considering running in Gilmore, where he stood aside in favour of Andrew Constance before the last election.

• The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks round-up of Queensland politics relates that long-serving Labor members Graham Perrett and Shayne Neumann are under pressure to make way for female candidates in their seats of Moreton and Blair, with former state secretary Julie-Ann Campbell favoured by the Left in Moreton and state Ipswich MP Jennifer Howard “weighing up her options for a tilt at Blair”.

• Poll Bludger contributor Adrian Beaumont has a new post at The Conversation on developments in the campaign for the October 14 election in New Zealand.

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.

1,617 comments on “Thursday miscellany: Greens and Liberal Senate vacancies, etc. (open thread)”

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  1. Did anyone watch European cricket championship currently being played in Europe. It is T10 tournament.
    A lot of players for various countries in that tournament are of South Asian heritage. 🙂

  2. Blues Point Tower:
    The developer was a personal friend of the Premier.

    (I just made that up but his wife was an Evatt)

  3. Ven – A friend of my brother’s was once the coach of Estonia.

    The T10 format is a little too much of a crazy bash at everything type game.


  4. Victoriasays:
    Tuesday, October 3, 2023 at 8:35 pm
    Ven

    Look at who are financial backers of X. Therein
    Is the answer as to why Musk is intent on destroying X

    Victoria
    By any chance did you watch today’s Rachel Maddow show regarding Elon Musk takeover of X?


  5. B.S. Fairmansays:
    Tuesday, October 3, 2023 at 8:39 pm
    Ven – A friend of my brother’s was once the coach of Estonia.

    The T10 format is a little too much of a crazy bash at everything type game.

    I don’t know whether you mentioned Estonia by chance but currently Estonia is versing Denmark. 🙂

  6. Taylormade @ #1548 Tuesday, October 3rd, 2023 – 8:21 pm

    The Age 03/10
    Pallas revealed the changes at a property industry breakfast on Tuesday, but a media release clarifying details of the tax was not released until 3.15pm, about seven hours after the treasurer announced it.
    _____________________
    Might have been a good idea to tell the new Premier first.
    Falling apart already. He hasn’t been gone a week yet.

    Premier Allan confirmed in QT today that it was endorsed by the new cabinet.

    Poor media darlings aren’t in cabinet so have to wait a few extra hours for the detail.

  7. I think the person involved in that case in Toowoomba has been strongly implied to be a certain person who also had a case against them in the ACT not so long ago

  8. I really rate Chris Minns. He’s just a great communicator. He’s only 44 – is it crazy to think he might end up a federal minister (or party leader) one day?

  9. Steve777 @ #1552 Tuesday, October 3rd, 2023 – 8:35 pm

    ” The Liberal MP Julian Leeser has warned that the American-style politics at the heart of the anti-voice campaign are “damaging the shared project that is Australia” and raised fears about a lack of empathy for Indigenous people.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/oct/03/indigenous-voice-to-parliament-referendum-julian-leeser-yes-campaign-american-politics

    That statement from Leeser is damaging for Dutton.

    I wonder how much of the Jewish-Australian community Leeser has convinced to vote YES. …?

  10. Socrates @ #1550 Tuesday, October 3rd, 2023 – 8:30 pm

    Bob Carr had a tweet tonight of an article he wrote in the Australian today about the “collapsing support for AUKUS in US Congress”.

    Bob Carr@bobjcarr
    “AUKUS is unravelling & won’t pass for a defence policy. Rightwing commentators don’t see it meeting the tests – a seminal shift in attitudes. US won’t sell us Virginia class. Pat Conroy’s “appeasers” are in the Congress. British-built subs are off in 2050s” https://theaustralian.com.au/commentary/aukus-consensus-is-collapsing-under-weight-of-labor-blunders/news-story/30b88fb3daa62779c3a98c42582832d5

    Albo needs to stand up like a strong leader and abandon this AUKUS debacle sooner rather than later.

  11. That’s a really dumb thing to post hazza – not clever. The consequences of breaching the law in QLD will be visited on William not you.


  12. hazzasays:
    Tuesday, October 3, 2023 at 8:55 pm
    I really rate Chris Minns. He’s just a great communicator. He’s only 44 – is it crazy to think he might end up a federal minister (or party leader) one day?

    Yes.
    Great communicator? Leader of federal ALP? That is some vivid imagination.


  13. Rex Douglassays:
    Tuesday, October 3, 2023 at 9:04 pm
    Socrates @ #1550 Tuesday, October 3rd, 2023 – 8:30 pm

    Bob Carr had a tweet tonight of an article he wrote in the Australian today about the “collapsing support for AUKUS in US Congress”.

    Bob Carr@bobjcarr
    “AUKUS is unravelling & won’t pass for a defence policy. Rightwing commentators don’t see it meeting the tests – a seminal shift in attitudes. US won’t sell us Virginia class. Pat Conroy’s “appeasers” are in the Congress. British-built subs are off in 2050s” https://theaustralian.com.au/commentary/aukus-consensus-is-collapsing-under-weight-of-labor-blunders/news-story/30b88fb3daa62779c3a98c42582832d5

    Albo needs to stand up like a strong leader and abandon this AUKUS debacle sooner rather than later.

    It looks more and more likely that US Republicans will bail out Albo in this endeavour. 🙂

  14. Herald Sun 03/10
    Multiple government sources said Ms Allan’s office was unaware of the details of the tax changes or the timing of the announcement.

    Arriving at parliament on Tuesday Assistant Treasurer Danny Pearson said he had no idea about the expanded tax.
    “I’m not across that,” he said.
    “I see that’s just popped up momentarily ago. I don’t have the details on that.”
    _____________________
    Not much of an Assistant Treasurer.
    Good enough for Rex though.

  15. The Evening Brief: Republicans are truly in disarray

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/2/2196887/-The-Evening-Brief-Republicans-are-truly-in-disarray

    “The Republican Party sh-tshow continues unabated this week. Let’s start with Donald Trump, who has been on quite the bender the past few days. It’s certainly clear that if the media gave Donald Trump the same level of “Is he too old?” scrutiny, there wouldn’t be much else for them to write about. Imagine if Joe Biden had spewed this nonsense:

    “All the currently dry canals [in California] will be brimming and used to irrigate everything, including your own homes and bathrooms and everything. You’re going to be happy, and I’m going to get it done fast. They say that there’s so much water up north that I want to have the overflow areas go into your forests and dampen your forests. Because if you dampen your forests you’re not going to have these forest fires that are burning at levels that nobody’s ever seen before.”

  16. Taylormade it’s hardly something to build a case on, but happy to have my comment deleted by someone who has the ability to do so. Thousands of people have been charged with crimes in the ACT in the last year.

  17. Ven

    Just watched the segment on Rachel Maddox Show re Elon musk and X.

    Been saying it for ages. musk is a bad actor and it was obvious what his game plan was regarding twitter.

  18. Over in Washington, the two House caucus are set to meet at 9am (so 2.5 hours from now).

    The Dems are going to decide if they will bail out McCarthy and for what price if they are going to do so. It is looking more and more likely the Dems do not have the will to save him for anything that McCarthy is going to be willing or able to concede.

    The Republicans are just going to meet to throw poop at each other like monkeys. Actually, more likely McCarthy is going to try and split the hard Right as they don’t like each other – Greene and Boebert famously had a fight in the ladies once. But I doubt there is much chance that is going to work as none of them want to be seen as the one who saved McCarthy.

    But then Congress is going to be without a speaker until they can decide on a new speaker and last time it took 15 votes when there was a candidate.


  19. Victoriasays:
    Tuesday, October 3, 2023 at 9:28 pm
    Ven

    Just watched the segment on Rachel Maddox Show re Elon musk and X.

    Been saying it for ages. musk is a bad actor and it was obvious what his game plan was regarding twitter.

    Victoria
    I thought I became immune to the crazy stuff that is going in US of A after watching it for so many years especially since Hanging chad story, which won Bush jr his presidency.
    But every day my jaw drops atleast once since Trump became President.
    This Musk guy is something else.
    He is craziness personified and he became owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, with some evil designs.

  20. Ven

    The mistake people make is to believe the bad actors around the place are neo nazis. Nothing new about them. They are the real deal.. just original nazis.

  21. “All the currently dry canals [in California] will be brimming and used to irrigate everything, including your own homes and bathrooms and everything. You’re going to be happy, and I’m going to get it done fast. They say that there’s so much water up north that I want to have the overflow areas go into your forests and dampen your forests. Because if you dampen your forests you’re not going to have these forest fires that are burning at levels that nobody’s ever seen before.”

    The man’s a genius! Why has nobody thought of that before?

  22. Lars Von Triersays:
    Tuesday, October 3, 2023 at 9:04 pm
    That’s a really dumb thing to post hazza – not clever. The consequences of breaching the law in QLD will be visited on William not you.

    ==========================================================
    Lars coming out in strong defence of his man!

    Big problem at the ranch!

    Hazza hasn’t said anything that we don’t already know.

  23. Sorry, not taylormade but LvT. Posting from the mobile site is a hassle.

    completely understand the concern but I think my comment was sufficiently ambiguous.

  24. well mccarthy hardly had a majority to begin with it took about 10 votes before he could find enough members he wanted to be speaker in 2014

  25. in 2015 after thehard right republicans lead buy jim jordan and then congresman Mark medows from the fredom caucis forced out then speaker john bayner out he wanted kevin mccarthy to replace him but thedespite being house deputy paul ryan agried to run as he was a conservative and compremise candadate now ryan and mckonal conservative republicans are some how moderits acording to the extreme right

  26. On the high profile man, I have to agree with Lars. Have people forgotten the impact on a Canberra trial of media speculation over the defendant’s identity?

    It is not yet legal to name high profile man, even if you think you know who it is.
    End of story.

  27. suprising the main stream republicans have a majority trump hates mckonal but mckonal has a majority of republican senaters behind him rick scott only got a few votres but the right arechalinging mccarthy

  28. Happy to leave criminal justice to the courts Lars.

    That is not the question.

    The question is why is this individual being protected?

    If it was your average Joe Blow their name would be everywhere.

    Some powerful influences behind this individual.

    They don’t want to see someone who was groomed for higher powers brought down.

  29. Andrew Clennell on sky: the election is “only” 17 months away

    Not yet, please

    But in seriousness, the revised forecasts that interest rates will stay high until late 2024 rather than early 2024 are concerning electorally

  30. Boerwar @ #1531 Tuesday, October 3rd, 2023 – 7:12 pm

    ‘nath says:
    Tuesday, October 3, 2023 at 6:32 pm

    Actually the majority of African Australians are white South African born. So how does that fit into your neat schema?’
    —————————–
    Of course some African Americans are confusing Cat’s visual difference expertise by migrating to Australia and to the US, not forgetting Liberians who migrate to Australia after first being guests of the cotton and rice plantations in the US, thereby confusing the visual expertise issue even further.

    How to tell the visual difference becomes more and more challenging even for experts like Cat, Pi and perhaps Mexicanbeemer who also brought into the visual expertise argument.

    Then there are the Afrikaaners who migrated to Australia and to the US. A significant proportion of them have Bantu Blood… So… how to visually tell the difference between them, other African Australians and African Americans. Then, of course, ‘Cape coloureds’ of various lineages have also migrated to Australia and to the US making the whole visual recognition thing even more challanging for Cat’s visual discrimination.

    Of course if she cannot visually discriminate between all US people of colour and all Australian people of colour that is because of her inherent racism which she shares with Pi who holds similar expert views, of course.

    Oh there you are. As I said, you hate losing an argument. So you’ve shifted the goalposts and created a whole new paradigm in a pathetic attempt to humiliate me, because that’s all you’ve got.

    Do you even realise that you’ve actually proven my point? That there are many different types of Africans who make up the global diaspora and they are not that difficult to tell apart at all.

    But don’t even address the evidence I placed squarely in front of you, Boerwar, but instead go on a feeble frolic that ends up labelling Pi and myself ‘racist’. You don’t know how sad and wrong you are, Boerwar. That you would stoop to such a pusillanimous low, because you can’t stand losing an argument. I pity you.

    Anyway, to address your specious points.

    How many Bantu Afrikaaners have migrated to Australia and the US? Well, I don’t know about ‘Bantu blood’ because Bantu actually refers to a language dialect:

    South African Bantu-speaking peoples represent the overwhelming majority ethno-racial group of South Africans. Occasionally grouped as Bantu, the term itself is derived from the English word “people”, common to many of the Bantu languages. The Oxford Dictionary of South African English describes “Bantu”, when used in a contemporary usage and or racial context as “obsolescent and offensive”, because of its strong association with the “white minority rule” with their apartheid system, however, Bantu is used without pejorative connotations in other parts of Africa and is still used in South Africa as the group term for the language family.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantu_peoples_of_South_Africa

    So, it could be a few, or it could be a lot, but being the ‘ethno-racial group of South Africans’, I would think nath is right here and there are probably more White Afrikaaners in Australia. I make the obvious point that, if they are here, they do look different to the South Sudanese. Who there are more of in Australia.

    Now, ‘Cape Coloureds’:

    Cape Coloureds are a South African ethnic classification consisting primarily of persons of mixed race African, Asian and European descent. Although Coloureds form a minority group within South Africa, they are the predominant population group in the Western Cape

    (Wikipedia)

    Nope, I don’t think they would be confused with South Sudanese African Australians either.

    Finally, the Liberians in Australia:
    People in Australia who were born in Liberia
    2016 Census Country of birth QuickStats: 3,026

    Compared with 8,255 people who were born in South Sudan.

    https://www.abs.gov.au/census/find-census-data/quickstats/2021/4111_AUS

    All that, though, is beside the point. The point being that it was absolutely offensive to call me ‘racist’, when my original call was for African Australians to get ad work over African Americans.

    Now, if you can explain to me how that is ‘racist’, Boerwar, I’m all ears.

    Or you can apologise for the outrageous slur.

  31. Socratessays:
    Tuesday, October 3, 2023 at 10:02 pm
    On the high profile man, I have to agree with Lars. Have people forgotten the impact on a Canberra trial of media speculation over the defendant’s identity?

    It is not yet legal to name high profile man, even if you think you know who it is.
    End of story.
    ==============================================
    Who’s naming anyone Socrates?

    Plus, the fact anyone has to hide under such cowardice says a lot about the individuals behind it.

    Interesting to see you defending this suppression.

    Obviously, you don’t think rapists should be named until proven guilty.

  32. Shooting in Bangkok, at least four dead. Thai police say a 14 year old (!) has been arrested.

    As for the recent national elections there, what a farce. What a disgrace

    Isn’t there a contributor in here who lives over there?

  33. The following is the Musk story Rachel Maddow show

    Is Musk following a plan for X, formerly known as Twitter?

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/2/2196983/-Is-Musk-following-a-plan-for-Twitter

    “The information was revealed in connection with that lawsuit against Musk when he tried to back out of buying Twitter. The author of the documents remains anonymous, but some suspect fired speech writer Darren Beattie, whose open ties to white supremacists were too much even for the Trump administration.

    It’s not clear what the end game is. Beattie seems to blame Twitter for Trump’s loss in 2020; Musk acquiring Twitter was supposed to fix that somehow, and make it possible for Trump to win in 2024. Beattie is also sympathetic to Russia, and feels Russia-friendly accounts were unfairly treated after the invasion of Ukraine.

    The road map accurately predicted what would happen: everyone getting upset at the extremists being allowed back on Twitter, the exodus of bluechecks, advertisers fleeing. (The plan suggested that Musk should blame the ADL.) It also anticipates Twitter being de-platformed — no longer allowed in the Apple or Google Play stores.

  34. Re the “high profile man”, he or his sponsor can apparently afford the best legal help money can be, so his name is suppressed. It makes a big difference.

  35. Ven

    Yes, that’s what I was wondering. What is Musk doing it all for? He’s lost billions in value with his management of twitter/X. I figure he’s just emotionally stunted and gets off to having a bunch of weirdos pander to him all day, nothing more. Plus the idea that Twitter is THE place for public discourse and I can be the guy with my hands on the levers, playing god and shaping public opinion as I see fit – when, in reality, twitter is just a niche platform full of angry people

  36. Just read Marcia Langton’s and Tom Calma comments. The voice just improved in the latest poll and then they’re back on their racist crap. Must be double agents.

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