Notwithstanding a headline in today’s Advertiser reading “candidate runs food truck without council approvals”, the biggest development of the South Australian campaign has probably been a scandal surrounding Health Minister Chris Picton (brother of Tim Picton, the former Labor WA state secretary who died in January after an assault outside a Perth nightclub), whose staff botched a bad job in seeking to discredit patients and their relatives who have complained about ambulance ramping. Yesterday brought the news that former AFL player Chris McDermott, star candidate and upper house ticket leader for the Sarah Game Fair Go for Australians party, had quit the party due to “irreconcilable differences” with Game, but the party’s prospects were likely remote in any case.
The remainder of this post will focus on how-to-vote cards, which can be found neatly displayed on the Electoral Commission website. These are of greater account than in other contexts due to the state’s distinctive practice of displaying them in polling booths, giving those of smaller parties a coverage they normally lack in the absence of the large volunteer base needed to disseminate them.
In considering the preferences of major parties, it is important to remember that their preferences are only distributed where they fail to run first or second, which is applying to an ever-increasing number of seats. However, in the case of Labor at the current election, it’s likely to happen only in country seats and perhaps a few places on the urban periphery where the final count could come down to Liberal and an independent. Labor’s cards notably have the Liberals ahead of a number of competitive or incumbent independents: Nick McBride and Fraser Ellis are last in MacKillop and Narungga, and Airlie Keen is behind the Liberal (though not One Nation) in Hammond. The point is almost certainly academic in Florey, but it’s nonetheless interesting to note that the Liberal candidate has been put ahead of one-time Labor MP Frances Bedford.
The Liberals have in all cases put One Nation ahead of Labor without the requirement of a “deal”, since One Nation is not directing preferences in any lower house seat, and in the upper house recommends preferences only to the two “family” parties. One Nation have also been placed ahead of competitive independents in Finniss (Lou Nicholson), Flinders (Meghan Petherick) and MacKillop (Nick McBride, who has been put last), though not Narungga (Fraser Ellis), Kavel (Matt Schultz), Mount Gambier (Travis Fatchen) and Port Adelaide (Claire Boan). As is usual for the Liberals these days, the Greens have mostly been put last and Labor second last.
The Greens have Labor ahead of Frances Bedford in Florey, despite what seems to me to be her progressive record as a former MP, along with the other independents previously noted in Narungga, MacKillop, Kavel and Hammond. However, the independents have been placed higher in Finniss, where Labor could conceivably make the final count, and Flinders, where it seems unlikely. The party has for some reason opted not to offer a recommendation in the seat of Adelaide.
Family First, the Australian Family Party and Fair Go for Australians all have conventionally right-wing tickets, with the first favouring One Nation over Liberal and the others largely vice-versa. The latter has been consistently favourable to independents, the others variable. The Nationals, who are running in three seats, have Meghan Petherick in Flinders ahead of both the Liberals and One Nation, and Liberal only fifth on an upper house order that favours small conservative parties. United Voice Australia has a consistently right-wing ordering of One Nation, Liberal, Labor, Greens, but has favoured independents over all of the above in all relevant cases, namely Florey, Port Adelaide and Narungga.
Animal Justice consistently has a conventionally left-wing ordering of Greens, Labor, Liberal, One Nation, but has favoured independents over all of them in relevant cases where the party is running, namely Finniss, Kavel and Stuart. Legalise Cannabis and Stephen Pallaras Real Change are all over the shop: the former seems to favour right-wing preference ordering in country seats and left-wing in the city, and has Labor ahead of the Greens in the upper house; the latter is consistent only in having One Nation last.
Absolute rubbish and a lot of reinventing history going on there Jumping Ship. Everyone knew about the algae bloom almost 12 months ago, and to avoid going to the beach. It was abundantly obvious to everyone to avoid swimming in the ocean and in fact my own beach at Normanville was entirely fenced off almost immediately, so you couldnt have swam on it even if you wanted to. I genuinely feel sorry for beachside residents, but for those who continued to walk on the each or swim, it really is a cop out to turn around and blame the government.
Like I said- where were 4 Corners, nine months ago if they really cared?? If it had happened on Sydney Harbor you can bet your bottom dollar they would have been there within the week highlighting the tragedy and devastation of it on our nation. Disappointing when they finally did decide to turn their attention to it they didnt provide us with anything insightful about what may be causing the bloom what we can expect over the next 12 months and what can be done to combat it. They also didn’t touch on any nuances, such as the fact that thousands of people have swum in Adelaide metropolitan beaches all summer and been completely fine.
I’m over my tax payer dollars being wasted on this useless outfit. Like I said just defund them already.
Anyone watching 4 Corners wouldn’t have been surprised at anything. Except one comment.
When the reporter told Mali he has 8 members of his scientific committee say that Mali hadn’t consulted with them before releasing his “summer plan”, Mali becomes very animated and asks for their names.
Why do you think that was?
The ABC has had several news reports on the algal bloom over the past year. And it wasn’t abundantly obvious for months after reports first started appearing that it was unsafe to go swimming. “Everybody knew” obviously didn’t include the people interviewed in the episode. Once all the dead marine animals starting washing up on the beach, the government should have put out warnings in an abundance of caution instead of relying on the “published literature”. There has been definite downplaying of the effects of the bloom eg reports that the scientists had been told not to investigate until after the election. A definite feeling that the government thought the bloom would disappear quickly and they just have to compensate for economic losses, rather than protecting people from the health impacts.
That was an absolutely terrible interview by Nicola Spurrier, very defensive and hostile. Won’t be surprised if she’s thrown under the bus after the election as the “public health official” who failed to give the government sufficient information.
You can join the “Defund the ABC!” club along with the usual suspects
JS
Absolutely no evidence there will be any late neurological problems. Brevetoxin is actually a neurotoxin that causes permanent short term memory loss in some marine mammal but it’s never done it in humans.
So don’t worry. Nicola was guilty of getting a lot wrong but she didn’t jeopardise our health. Asthma Australia gave better advice but I really don’t think she was that far off.
JS
Nicola had her contract renewed in November, much to many people’s disappointment (I liked her at med school)
She’s not going anywhere. She would have run everything by Mali.
They did put out warnings!!! Like I said my own beach was closed off almost immediately. You really are reinventing history. Honestly, if there was a scandal I would be the first to call for their heads but all that program did was highlight one case of a government requesting the wording of a report be amended (and being quite open about doing it and the reasons they thought it was justified- hardly a cover up), admitting they probably would have managed some things differently had more scientific evidence been available at the outset (almost always the case in any public health disaster- covid being a prime example), and highlighting that the government chose to rely on the contested evidence put forward by some scientists rather than the contested evidence put forward by other scientists (again almost always the case).
The way 4 corners carried on anyone would have though Mali had personally gone and gassed those poor kangaroos himself.
As for ABC coverage over the last year, it has been incredibly weak, uninformative, and almost an after thought given the gravity of this natural disaster. Very reflective of the fact that their 24/7 news channel is heavily based out of Sydney.
Their so called ‘flaghsip’ news program choosing to release this less than a week before an election as a political hit job rather than using it as an opportunity to provide a genuine public service and analysis of the bloom, stunk far more than anything they were able to uncover or pin on the government. I found the whole thing disgusting and a complete insult to South Australians.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Karenia Cristata is very rare so no one knows whether there will be long term neurological effects or not. The video of the kangaroos was really disturbing and should have rung alarm bells in anyone studying this area. The Florida expert mentioned that health effects increase with repeated exposure, which is also worrying. There have been reports of increased neurological disorders linked to different algal blooms eg blue-green algae and MND. This definitely should NOT be swept under the carpet!
There’s been a missed opportunity to collect data to understand this species better and measure adverse health impacts eg over the winter there could have been an app to report health problems from being near the beach, similar to the citizen science app to report marine kills. The government could have funded extra scientific studies on top of the usual SARDI budget – according to Four Corners they didn’t fund the paper on Karenia Cristata that’s under review. AFAIK they only funded $50 vouchers for restaurants near the beach and compensation for fisheries. There could even have been experiments on interventions that might have killed the algae, like collecting water samples and trying different substances, like clay, seaweed, etc.
JS
They really didn’t want to know. They also sacked a bunch of scientists who did want to know.
Everything in SA is politics first.
Bludgeoned Westie (last page): it’s kinda hard to say anything about what’s happening with Labor’s vote considering the lack of polling during the campaign. There might be a bit of softening either from the Picton email thing or the algal bloom, and meanwhile the nutcase Lib candidate in Wright could push it in the other direction – wait and see. Polls from last year are ancient history anyway (before the big One Nation spike).
New thread.