Weekend miscellany: Bullwinkel, Bradfield and Bennelong (open thread)

An alliterative trio of seats faces redistribution-related preselection complications.

The site has been grappling with a few technical issues over the past day or so, which are hopefully now resolved. Perhaps this was the reason yesterday’s post following the count for the New South Wales state by-election for Northern Tablelands, which as expected was a lay-down misere for the Nationals, attracted a grand total of zero comments. Or perhaps not. Looking ahead, I believe we have a quiet week coming up on the polling front, unless The Australian treats us to quarterly Newspoll aggregates with state and demographic breakdowns, which are about due. Other than that, there is likely to be only the weekly Roy Morgan until the three-weekly YouGov poll, which past form suggests should be with us on Friday.

Much of this week’s preselection news relates directly or indirectly to the federal redistributions, which I discussed with Ben Raue of The Tally Room in a podcast you can access at the bottom of this post:

The West Australian reports former state Nationals leader Mia Davies has confirmed approaches from “senior Nationals in the eastern states” to run in the proposed new seat of Bullwinkel, which partly corresponds with the state seat of Central Wheatbelt that she he has held since 2013. The idea has been talked up by party leader David Littleproud, and not ruled out by Davies. Davies led the Nationals from the defeat of the Barnett government in March 2017 and held the title of Opposition Leader after the party emerged from the 2021 election landslide with more seats than the Liberals, before stepping aside in January 2023 and announcing she would not contest the next election. She became a figure of controversy within the party when she called for Barnaby Joyce to resign in 2018 over sexual harassment allegations.

Paul Sakkal of the Sydney Morning Herald reports “teal sources not permitted to speak on the record” say Nicolette Boele, who was gearing up for a second run as an independent in Bradfield, remains keen despite expectations Kylea Tink will seek to move there with the mooted abolition of her seat of North Sydney. Boele came within 4.2% of unseating Liberal member Paul Fletcher in 2022. Reports last week suggested former state Treasurer Matt Kean, who announced his impending departure from state parliament on Tuesday, might challenge Fletcher for Liberal preselection, but Sakkal reports party sources saying he will only seek the seat if Fletcher retires. Alexandra Smith of the Sydney Morning Herald reports any path to preselection for Kean in Bradfield would be complicated by the fact that the redistribution leaves his “Liberal branch enemies” within the redrawn seat.

Aaron Patrick of the Financial Review reports Hunters Hill mayor Zac Miles has been lobbying for the NSW Liberal Party to reopen the preselection process for Bennelong, after the proposed new boundaries made it more favourable to the party by adding territory from abolished North Sydney. Such a move would come at the expense of Scott Yung, a tutoring business owner who came with 1.8% of deposing Chris Minns from his seat of Kogarah at the state election in 2019, who was preselected unopposed last October. A source is also quoted saying Gisele Kapterian, who had been preselected for North Sydney, also canvassed for support for Bennelong, but has decided not to proceed.

Annika Smethurst of The Age reports on resistance in local Labor branches to a Socialist Left faction fait accompli that appears set to deliver preselection for the outer northern Melbourne seat of Calwell, which will be vacated with the retirement of Maria Vamvakinou, to Basem Abdo, a communications specialist born in Kuwait of Palestinian parents. Sensitivities are heightened by the fact that members only had preselection rights restored to them a year ago after a three-year takeover of the state branch by the national executive following branck-stacking scandals, with some reportedly threatening to back a “Dai Le-style campaign”.

Blake Antrobus of news.com.au reports Queensland Liberal Senator Gerard Rennick has failed in his court bid against his preselection defeat last year, the court having ruled that the Liberal National Party was within its rights to set a 60-day time frame for lodging an appeal which Rennick failed to meet.

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.

1,081 comments on “Weekend miscellany: Bullwinkel, Bradfield and Bennelong (open thread)”

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  1. I’m not sure what all the fuss over Dutton’s son is all about. The story is covered in all the NewsCorp sites? It’s basically a non event political wise and will be forgotten quickly.

  2. If the punters want to be mugs and pay more for their power bills then vote for Dutton. Its as simple as that. Bowen quoted $600 billion cost for 3% of Australias power.

  3. An 18 year old doing a few bumps while out on the town in Surfer’s is hardly out of the ordinary, nor do I think it’s remotely fair to suggest that this is an indication of poor parenting. I think you’d be hard pressed to find anybody on the Gold Coast who doesn’t partake in the nose candy every once in a while.

    Unless there’s some evidence that Dutton abused his position to cover this up – and as far as I can gather, there isn’t – I can’t say I’m comfortable at all with politicising this sort of thing. Let the kid enjoy his youth like the rest of us did.

  4. @Granny Anny at 10:23pm

    Ah, right, so further Solar Energy construction will be verboten if the Coalition take power? Nice to see that made clear.

    So what do they have planned as an alternative while they do a few decades of nothing while they get their pathetically underplanned nuclear power plants built up? I’ll bet it’s Jobseeker Energy, either with unemployed people being enslaved to constantly hand-operate pulleys or just burn them as fuel, Soylent Green style.

  5. Gough had a way with words. As in his description of Joe de Bruyn of the Shoppies as “the only Dutchman I know who doesn’t like dykes”.

  6. Dutton has always taken a hard stance against drug permissiveness and decriminalization and has deported people with drug convictions.

  7. Time and tide: the Liberal Party of Australia celebrated the 80th anniversary of its founding by Robert Menzies at a Galah Dinner in Sydney last Friday: https://abnevents.liberal.org.au/80

    Of these 80 years, the “Liberals” have sadly been in power for 51.

    I note that the Liberal Party Wikipedia entry has been updated to describe their position as “centre-right to right-wing”, like the UK Conservatives. It hasn’t been a “Centre-Right” party for ages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_of_Australia
    A case could be made for Centre-Right to Far-Right.

    Will they make it to 100? to 90? I’d say hopefully not except that they’d probably be replaced by something worse.

  8. I don’t consider politicians children fair game for press vultures.
    Imagine, as a teen how suffocating it would be living with that level of scrutiny.

  9. I had to go and rescue my eldest son from the Mens toilets at Town Hall station in Sydney once when his brother ran out to tell me that an older man ‘was very interested in him’ 😯
    He was only about 8 years old.

  10. Peter Dutton has just announced a plan to lock fossil fuels into the Australian economy for three decades or more, disguised as a push to address greenhouse emissions through nuclear energy. He either knows this, in which case he’s a liar, or he doesn’t, in which case he’s an idiot. I think it’s the former.

    Whichever it is, that’s the news, not the bag of… icing sugar? Washing powder? Whatever… that his son had in his posession.

  11. Badthinkersays:
    Monday, June 24, 2024 at 8:15 pm
    Bizarre that the Murdoch press is running with it. Surely they haven’t had an outbreak of journalism?
    You said it was a family matter about 20 s. ago.
    It’s the old story:
    When a Federal [or State] Labor Government looks to be in trouble, Murdoch will always slither to the rescue.
    Read: Power Without Glory
    ======================================================

    “Read: Power Without Glory”

    Maybe you should of. The book is nothing to with the Labor party. It is far more to do with the evil people behind the founding of the DLP. No it isn’t about the Shoppies either.

    Here is a picture of one of them:
    https://twitter.com/ozkitsch/status/1028798937627418624

  12. Dee says:
    Monday, June 24, 2024 at 11:12 pm
    I don’t consider politicians children fair game for press vultures.
    Imagine, as a teen how suffocating it would be living with that level of scrutiny.

    ___________________________________________

    I am thinking exactly the same thing.

    I know about the argument of wheeling your kids and family out for photo ops means they are fair game, but youngsters (and is at least up to 21) often don’t have the choice or the judgement to say no when this happens. They shouldn’t be punished by being held up to ridicule unless they put themselves out there as adults.

    What if it was your teenager out there on the front page of the tabloids?

  13. I have one of those old copies of Power Without Glory with the typewritten sheet inserted into it with the character names and their real identities next to it.

    To say it has nothing to do with the Labor Party is a unique interpretation.

  14. davesays:
    Monday, June 24, 2024 at 11:50 pm
    I have one of those old copies of Power Without Glory with the typewritten sheet inserted into it with the character names and their real identities next to it.

    To say it has nothing to do with the Labor Party is a unique interpretation.
    =======================================================

    It was to do with the those that left the Labor Party to form the DLP. John Wren and Mannix were no friends of the Labor Party.

  15. Thought on that – so when a Conservative political leader’s family gets into trouble, that’s off limits, right?

    Then look at how Conservatives have been treating Hunter Biden for the past decade.

    Plain. Fucking. Hypocrisy. Also they shot first.

  16. davesays:
    Tuesday, June 25, 2024 at 12:01 am
    PWG was published in 1950, before the split, and went back as far as the 1890s in terms of politics.
    ===============================================

    Be that as it may, the evil people portrayed in that book. Were the ones that were directly or indirectly involved in the forming of the DLP and not the ones that remained in the Labor Party.

  17. Be that as it may, the evil people portrayed in that book. Were the ones that were directly or indirectly involved in the forming of the DLP and not the ones that remained in the Labor Party.
    _____________________________________
    Even those that died in the 1920s and 30s?

    Have they been retrospectively allotted to the DLP?

  18. In any case, I much prefer this interpretation of Wren’s influence on Labor to your own adolescent opinion:

    ‘How great his influence became, and how debasing its effects, is likely destined to remain forever suspended between reality and legend, fact and fiction.’

    Neither Power Nor Glory: 100 Years Of Political Labor In Victoria, 1856-1956

  19. davesays:
    Tuesday, June 25, 2024 at 12:10 am
    Be that as it may, the evil people portrayed in that book. Were the ones that were directly or indirectly involved in the forming of the DLP and not the ones that remained in the Labor Party.
    _____________________________________
    Even those that died in the 1920s and 30s?

    Have they been retrospectively allotted to the DLP?
    =======================================================

    Nearly the whole book followed John Wren’s life and mainly concentrated on that and the people he interacted with and influenced. What actual bad Labor character in the book are you actually suggesting for that early period?

  20. I’m not making any point about the veracity of the book, I’m stating that the claim it has nothing to do with the Labor party is stupid.

  21. davesays:
    Tuesday, June 25, 2024 at 12:18 am
    I’m not making any point about the veracity of the book, I’m stating that the claim it has nothing to do with the Labor party is stupid.
    =================================================

    Fair enough, but in my opinion it is much more to do with the founding of the DLP.

    Though my previous post was about this claim of yours:
    “Even those that died in the 1920s and 30s?”
    “Have they been retrospectively allotted to the DLP?”

    As my memory of the reading of the book. At that stage of John Wrens life it was more corrupt police he was dealing with and not politicians. When he had acquired much wealth he got cosy with Archbishop Mannix and that’s when his political influence began.

  22. davesays:
    Tuesday, June 25, 2024 at 12:14 am
    In any case, I much prefer this interpretation of Wren’s influence on Labor to your own adolescent opinion:
    ============================================

    I’m happy for you to keep your mature opinion on this.

    “Claims about Wren’s influence in the Labor party go back to at least 1907.”

    Maybe they do, though i do not believe Frank Hardy wrote of them in his novel. Which was the point originally under discussion.

  23. John When had influence because electorates were small and everyone knew everyone and in the old days politics was more public because the local town hall hosted party meetings where anyone could attend and in places like Collingwood the locals met up at one of the local pubs and at Victoria Park.

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