Reports continue to suggest both parties expect a tight result in the Dunkley by-election, which this site will be over like a rash during counting tomorrow evening, being likely the only place that will publish results at booth level as they are reported. The Australian reports Liberal internal polling pointing to a swing of about 5%, just short of the 6.3% needed to win. Labor is reportedly concerned that its chances will be harmed by low turnout: as of Wednesday, 15.15% of enrolled voters had cast early votes, which compares with 17.93% and 17.08% at the same stage before last year’s by-elections in Aston and Fadden.
Other electoral news of the last week:
• A weekend Liberal preselection vote for the Perth seat of Curtin, which the party lost to teal independent Kate Chaney, resulted in a 192-64 vote win for Tom White, former Uber chief executive in South Korea and staffer to state MP Peter Collier, ahead of Matt Moran, an Afghanistan veteran and former Ten Network reporter now employed in government relations at naval shipbuilder Luerssen Australia.
• Michelle Grattan of The Conservation quotes a Labor sources saying it is “highly unlikely” the party will contest the by-election for Scott Morrison’s seat of Cook, the date for which remains to be confirmed. Reports increasingly indicate Sutherland Shire mayor Carmelo Pesce, initially presumed the front-runner, faces stiff competition from Simon Kennedy, McKinsey partner and unsuccessful Bennelong candidate. Pesce has mostly moderate backing, including from state party leader Mark Speakman, while Simon Kennedy has mostly conservative supporters including Tony Abbott and Dominic Perrottet, although an exception appears to be moderate Senator Dave Sharma. Rounding out the field of four are Gwen Cherne, veteran family advocate commissioner, and the little-fancied Benjamin Britton, an army veteran and former United Australia Party candidate. The Sydney Morning Herald’s CBD column reports ANZ banker Alex Cooke, whose campaign slogan would have written itself, has withdrawn.
• A suggestion that Liberal moderates including powerbroker Michael Photios hope to persuade independent Wentworth MP Allegra Spender to join their party and faction in the “medium term”, potentially with an offer of a front bench position, has received short shrift from the proposed target. The Financial Review reports those concerned are “unconvinced it will be possible to wrest the once safe Sydney seat away from her”, and believe her 4% margin “has grown since she entered parliament”.
Sussan has been a very faithful #crumbmaiden. However, in a party of mysogenists there is not much that will ‘fall off the table’ for her. SfM would move her and other women to the front for photos and then put the men back in the front for the business stuff.
I guess being in parliament has its perks but, what a price!
Boerwar
Thanks.
We’re going well past 2.5 degrees because that is what the world’s individual human desire to increase consumption of every kind will dictate. No government can withstand this. We are not eating our future with consumption. We are cooking it.
Renewables will eventually replace fossil fuels but it will be far too late because China, India and Indonesia are all increasing their coal-burning.
Some SMRs in Australia are neither here nor there. Incidentally, the economic logic with nuclear reactors is that bigger is cheaper per unit of energy produced because of lots of economies of scale.
Three biggies for Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane conurbations should do the trick.
Steve777
We never get that sort of rain totals!
Funny how the joke is that Melbourne is always raining, when it actually isn’t.
I always knew the dimensions of the Trump and GOP shit show and how it would look. But seriously it is March 2024. Enough already!!
Finally, a sign that MAGA Mike Johnson is finally budging on Ukraine assistance:
“U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson told the Voice of America (VoA) on Feb. 29 that his chamber would consider $60 billion in aid for Ukraine “as soon as the government is funded.”
The House of Representatives approved a bill on Feb. 29 to avoid a partial government shutdown less than two days before a looming deadline that threatened to disrupt federal operations. To be implemented, the measure now has to be passed by the Senate and signed into law by President Joe Biden.”
https://kyivindependent.com/speaker-johnson-says-house-will-consider-ukraine-aid-as-soon-as-government-is-funded/
I take this to mean that Johnson will put the Senate’s foreign aid bill to the House for an up-and-down vote as the next item of business after President Biden signs the just-agreed stopgap government funding measure into law. Finally! But … how many Ukrainians will have had to die because of these past few months of delay?
That’s really sad news for the family, Victoria. Might I suggest your impacted family members get in touch with this organisation:
https://stillbirthfoundation.org.au/
C@t
Yay. You are back. I’ve missed you!
Thank you.
C@tmomma @ Friday, March 1, 2024 at 9:23 am:
===========
Welcome back, C@t!
C@t
I know it sounds glib, but if it was early on in the pregnancy, it would be more bearable. She was full term and the pregnancy had gone well without a hitch.
That is what is making hard to accept. Sigh…….
nadia88 at 8.2 am
“Lars – with nearly 20% of voters doing postals, yes I reckon the local voters there are avoiding the booths.”
Note the 20% have not done postals, just requested an application. Up to yesterday included, the return rate was just over 12%. It might get to 16%.
Pre-polling was tracking at 2022 level until Tues but has dropped about 800 below in the past two days. See:
https://antonygreen.com.au/dunkley-by-election-tracking-the-early-vote/
Labor got 53.8% of postal votes in 2022. See:
https://results.aec.gov.au/27966/Website/HouseDivisionPage-27966-210.htm
https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/australian-politics/2024/03/01/victorian-labor-senator-linda-white-dies
Two members of Parliament die within a few months: both Victorian, both Labor, both women.
How sad.
Re Player One @8:54.
” Who remembers this clanger from one Kevin “Greatest moral challenge of our time … oh, wait …” Rudd?”
Um… No one?
Labor leader Kevin Rudd responded: “Mr Howard’s plan by contrast is to forget coal, forget clean coal, turn your back on the coal industry and instead let’s build 25 nuclear reactors in a suburb near you”. And the less said about that the better.
I must admit I had not. But somehow it does not surprise me”
Well, Kevin was right about the less being said the better. That quote probably dates from Kevin’s time is Opposition leader (Dec 2006-Nov 2007). It needs to be seen in context of the time, which you don’t give. This includes the fact that renewables were then more expensive than coal, some technologies (e.g. batteries) not proven at scale and the fact that no progress had been made towards decarbonisation. Nuclear, then as now, was been used as a distraction from renewable energy. Meanwhile, we could not just stop using coal overnight.
That quote may or may not align with Mr Rudd’s current views. It probably doesn’t but that is immaterial.
Why did you raise it in a comment about Alan Koehler’s article?
Aw-goody – Miss Indefatigable C@t returns
meher baba
Linda White was elected to the senate in 2022. So not long in federal politics.
Welcome back c@t!
Kos samaras on twitter
At the core of Morrison’s problem was that he fiddled when Australia burnt. No matter what anyone may think of the pandemic response, Australians just wanted to get through it and they wanted their leaders to ensure it.
Go back and take a look at his polling numbers. They started to dive the moment his government started to play politics with the pandemic response.
Again, no matter what anyone may have thought of the pandemic response, it was the greatest existential threat to the country since WW2.
Imagine John Curtin behaving like this during WW2. Unthinkable and for a lot of Australians in 2020, 2021, it was a comparison they often cited.
Victoria: “Linda White was elected to the senate in 2022. So not long in federal politics.”
She was one of a large bunch of Labor senators who was given a seat in the red room after lengthy career as a union boss: a practice that has never particularly enthused me, although I acknowledge that the party ultimately belongs to the trade union movement.
But that’s not a criticism of the late Senator White, may she rest in peace.
Barnaby Joyce ( or was that Alan) found in a QANTAS A380 engine after going missing.
The missing tool was found in an engine of the ‘plane at LAX.
https://simpleflying.com/atsb-qantas-a380-missing-tool-engine-lax/
Very sad news, Vic. My condolences to the family and friendship circle.
(I have a friend who went through something similar. It shook us all to the core. She’s living back in Germany these days, with a brood of 5. I’m going to check in on her now.)
Very sad news for you and your daughter’s group, Victoria.
It seems that these bad things always seem to come in groups.
Green&Gold 9.02am
“Thats called middle Australia focusing on their day job and their finances and not on wild pollical speculation.”
Middle Australia !
Where is it ?
North Qld ? Tassie ? Warringah ? Kooyong ?
The Liberals (and certainly the Nationals) are not representing middle Australia.
The Greens, the Teals, the Labor Party together with Pauline, Jackie, Clive, Bob and Andrew represent middle Australia.
The election results and polling tell us that!
Dutton,Morrison, Turnbull, Abbott, and Howard represent Howard’s largesse in allowing the institutionalization of corruption, nepotism, lack of transparency and men lacking acknowledge of women.
It is very typical of a LNP supporter to claim ownership of the moniker Green and Gold.
The LNP have a habit of claiming what is not belonging to them.
And quietly disposing of the remains !
The list in recent times is significant and telling.
The NACC is working through the list.
Sweating on a by election are we ?
Or as one Liberal member quipped “we call them buy elections” (and then guffaws to itself)
C@t
While I’m delighted to see you back, along with a number of other posters here (called the acolytes by someone important on this blog), I don’t want you gone again.
I suspect some of your old sparring partners will be out to test your ability to hold back when pushed, so please think very carefully before posting personal stuff for our sakes.
The West Australian reports that City Of Canning mayor Patrick Hall has withdrawn from the Tangney Liberal Party preselection.
Hall, who had been first to declare his candidacy, quit in the wake of Jesse Jacobs, accused of stealing Hall’s signs during a council election last year, nominating for the contest.
Hall said he was not pressured to drop out but there had been a “development that caused controversy around my campaign”.
“Someone has to show integrity and step out of the spotlight and that is going to be me,” Hall said.
Seems an odd decision when the guy who did no wrong bails out.
Jacobs is a former City of Canning councillor and has previously been an unsuccessful candidate for State parliament.
Hall’s departure leaves a field of six bidding to oust Sam Lim, possibly the biggest surprise winner for Labor in 2022.
So the Collier backed candidate gets up in Curtin, and… and, was that the Goiran candidate getting up in South Perth?
The Clan is dead, long live the Clan!
No wonder an entire branch of the Liberal party in South Perth took its bat and ball to the Nationals.
Their strategy of running in every electorate is no doubt looking better and better to long term conservatives sick and tired of the WA division’s antics.
And with so many of those same Liberals turning to Brian Burke for advice, including Seven West Media candidate Basil Zempilas, who can blame them?
Steve777 @ #63 Friday, March 1st, 2024 – 9:43 am
Because it was quoted in the article. Didn’t you read it?
Heartbreaking, Victoria. IDK. Just be there, I guess.
Good to see you back C@t!!
Thanks everyone for your kind messages.
How easily Linda White’s career is dismissed.
Union boss.
Others, including some Liberals even, are way more generous.
That’s such sad news, Victoria…so sorry to hear this,
So, the other day someone I know set up a Wix blog.
When they had input a bunch of information to set it up and then clicked ‘set up’ or whatever, the site established the whole blog for them including entire blog posts on various topics related to the intended subject of the blog.
It then invited them to edit the posts to make it ‘sound more like you’.
I suppose that’s a productivity gain.
Sorry to hear victoria. Hang in.
Dr Doolittlesays:
Friday, March 1, 2024 at 9:36 am
=====
Noted, yes you are correct. I misread the Antony Green comment.
19.4% postal applications, with a return rate of 12.9% so far.
I note also pre-polls overtook postals overnight.
So yes, postals will probably account for about 15% when the final siren blows.
C@t – glad you’re back & hope all is well with you. Remember that scroll bar too – i love it!
100 run partnersip up for Green and Hazelwood v New Zealand.
Probably dispense with protecting the number 11 now
I see Hazelwood’s faced 48 balls, but how many balls for the partnership?
Player One @10:17. ”Because it was quoted in the article. Didn’t you read it?”
Fair enough. I have read it now. It’s worth a read, as Alan Koehler always is. The quote appears in the middle of the article in the context of a review of the nuclear energy debate in Australia since 1998. The ban of nuclear was instituted by the Howard Government as a trade-off for Green support in the Senate for a replacement reactor at Lucas Heights (outer Sydney). That reactor is used for research and for the production of materials for nuclear medicine, not power generation. From then until now, politics was being played by both sides, as always. Alan calls out Peter Dutton’s focus on SMRs for the distraction that it is.
I’m still not sure why you chose to highlight that particular quote by Kevin Rudd from 2007, but you read the article and decided to link it here, so your call.
”So yes, postals will probably account for about 15% when the final siren blows.
So for those watching the counting tomorrow night, deduct about 0.75 to 1% from Labor’s 2PP as at the end of tomorrow evening.
This is the investigation by the Ukrainska Pravda journalists who were sneakily detained by Polish authorities a few days ago, for filming Polish farmers doing deals over Russian produce at the POL-BEL border:
“Hundreds of lorries carrying Russian agricultural products go through Belarus to Poland – Ukrainska Pravda investigation –
An investigation by Ukrainska Pravda journalist Mykhailo Tkach has revealed how hundreds of Polish lorries carrying Russian agricultural products are travelling through Belarus to Poland and back.
The Ukrainska Pravda film crew asked a man to call a Polish company and pretend to be the manager of an actual Belarusian company. He explicitly offered to sell Russian rapeseed meal accompanied by Belarusian documents. The manager of the Polish company asked him to email the terms and conditions.
Yet Poland banned the import of rapeseed meal from Ukraine in September 2023, following protests by farmers. Since then, the volume of products that have continued to arrive from Belarus has been steadily increasing”
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/02/29/7444429/
The very same cohesive, highly organised Polish farmers who spew forth hatred for Ukrainian produce and go as far as breaking into trucks and railway cars to steal and despoil Ukrainian grain, are the group who is sneaking around buying up more and more Russian produce. Helping the genocidal invaders while hurting their victims. These farmers are scum, who should be treated as enemies. I hope the Tusk Government puts them back in their place quick smart. If not, who could blame Ukrainians for resorting to self-help against them?
Don’t worry Steve777 Albo’s got this in Dunkley – Dr Doolittle told us so.
gol says:
Friday, March 1, 2024 at 10:01 am
“The Greens, the Teals, the Labor Party together with Pauline, Jackie, Clive, Bob and Andrew represent middle Australia.”
OK Gol, I’m quite willing to take these comments openly and at face value if you can tell me which specific policies of LNP, past and present, go against the interests and values of middle Australia, and how exactly the LNP should conduct itself in your eyes.
“how exactly the LNP should conduct itself in your eyes”
Be more like Labor would be my guess, but I’m sure goll can speak for themselves.
Jason Clare once again demonstrating his communications skill with clear forthright memorable plain speak.
If only it were contagious.
Open tweet to see video clip. Sandbagging?
https://twitter.com/Qldaah/status/1763350211559399725
David Marler @Qldaah
Peter Dutton predicting a 3% swing to the Liberals at the Dunkley byelection. #auspol
Embedded video
10:47 AM · Mar 1, 2024
rossmcg: “How easily Linda White’s career is dismissed.
Union boss.
Others, including some Liberals even, are way more generous.”
Are you suggesting that there’s something wrong with being a union boss? It’s far more than I’ve ever achieved in my career.
My comment, which was in no way directed at Senator White personally, was more about how Labor doesn’t seem to take much advantage of the opportunity to bring some younger talent into the Senate, and has even driven some away (eg, Lisa Singh: a story I won’t go through again today).
The Liberal have learnt from the republicans. Never be embarrassed by your bullshit being shown as bullshit. Just stack more on the pile.
RE: Curtain Lib preselection. If the Libs were smart they would run female moderates in every Teal seat to remove some of the reasons not to vote for them. Alas another male (don’t know his faction).
Victoria sorry to hear your sad news
Best wishes to your family
Perth had a dry start to summer but got the almost regular ex-cyclone “O week” rain. The brown off reminds me of my childhood in the ’70s running around barefoot on spiky buffalo lawns browned off by water restrictions.