I’ve spent the last week or two scouring media that had gone unattended during the South Australian election, so I’ve got a huge amount of verbiage to unload over the coming week or so. This will include lengthy round-ups of news from New South Wales and (especially) Victoria as soon as I have poll results to attach them to, and dedicated posts on the Victorian state by-election for Nepean on May 2 (for which the ballot paper draw was conducted yesterday) and the Farrer federal by-election a week later.
For starters, here’s the federal electoral news that’s unrelated to Farrer:
• New Nationals leader Matt Canavan has been left
stranded in the uncomfortable second position on the Queensland Liberal National Party’s Senate ticket for the next election. State council declined to deviate from the established practice of allocating the top position to a Liberal, in this case James McGrath, who retained the position in the face of a challenge from former Petrie MP Luke Howarth. There remain suggestions that Canavan might end up running for the lower house seat of Capricornia, where Michelle Landry is expected to retire. Third on the ticket is Adam Stoker, solicitor and husband of former Senator and now state MP Amanda Stoker. Another nominee for the third position was Joanna Lindgren, who had a year-long stint in the Senate in 2015 and 2016. However, The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column relates that the party’s applicant review committee rejected her due to “posts to her private Facebook page”, which had not been a problem for her last year when she ran for the lower house seat of Blair.
• Anthony Albanese told parliament last week that he was “satisfied with the current number of seats in the House of Representatives”, after reports in February that Special Minister of State Don Farrell was holding talks with other parties about an expansion. Nine Newspapers reports Albanese “left the door open to making changes after the election, and also did not rule out adding Senators in the NT and ACT”.
• The distraction of the South Australian election meant that I didn’t pay it enough attention at the time, but the DemosAU MRP poll from a month or so offered some highly detailed breakdowns from its bumper sample of 8484, together with its headline seat projection of Labor 83, One Nation 52, Coalition nine, Greens one and others five. This includes a finding that around 55% of Coalition voters from 2025 who are over 35, live in rural and regional areas and didn’t finish high school now support One Nation, as do an even half in outer metropolitan areas. The equivalent figures for Labor are a bit under half that. Modelled party vote estimates find the Liberals gaining seats from Labor and teals in Sydney and (especially) Melbourne, while losing nearly everything they currently hold to One Nation, who get ten seats from Labor besides.
• Fox & Hedgehog has published a review of its performance at the South Australian state election, which modestly assesses that its performance did not quite match YouGov’s while equalling DemosAU’s and outpointing Newspoll’s, though all four in fact did more than adequately. Contrary to conventional understandings of social desirability bias in polling, seemingly too many respondents are reported having voted for One Nation in 2025. This is matched by under-reporting of past vote for other right-wing minor parties, suggesting that many had in fact voted for Trumpet of Patriots or the like.
• Clive Palmer, who finally appeared to give up after last year’s election, said last month he would contest the Gold Coast seat of Fadden at the next election as part of what will resume being called the United Australia Party.
• James Massola of the Sydney Morning Herald related last month that former Liberal MP and state party president Jason Falinski, who lost his Sydney seat of Mackellar to teal independent Sophie Scamps in 2022 and did not recontest in 2025, was “widely expected” to contest the seat at the next election.
• Former Liberal MP Keith Wolahan, whose seat of Menzies was swamped in the unexpectedly forceful metropolitan wave in 2025, offers an impeccably data-driven analysis of the party’s electoral woes.
• Political science academic Murray Goot argues against the notion, often claimed by its champions, that compulsory voting is a moderating influence on Australian politics.
• I presented the case against first-past-the-post during an appearance on Perth radio station 6PR on Tuesday.
Finally, in non-federal news, a third by-election is on the horizon following the death on Thursday of Jimmy Sullivan, leaving vacant the inner northern Brisbane seat of Stafford. Sullivan won the seat for Labor in 2020 and 2024, retaining a 5.3% margin on the latter occasion in the face of a 6.6% swing to the LNP. He was suspended from the Labor caucus shortly after the election and expelled in May 2025 amid a reported domestic violence incident, for which no charges were laid.
Kirsdarke:
In Howard’s defense, the amount of time we had to spend learning about that horrifyingly waste of human life that occured during one of the most pointless wars ever fought was partly the genesis of both me being both anti-war and pro-republic. Probably not Johnny’s intention, but, hey, it got results.
On the other hand, I’ll never forgive the school system for the making us spend so much goddamn time on those narcissistic idiots and successful Darwin Award winners Burke and Wills when we could have been learning about, well, pretty much any other period of Australian or international history.
@Asha
Oh god, the Burke and Wills history projects, argh, that’s something I never thought I’d have to remember again.
Countless lessons devoted to this niche thing in that “Two British blokes led an expedition into colonial land they didn’t know without any support, then they died, the end.”
newyboy or anyone who loved Hungarian election results will like this story by Rachel Maddow (she is a great story teller).
https://youtu.be/lJdJKZYgckM?si=EYktwuLOm_eA7gx9
Interesting comment on that Greens article:
“Rising Tide the Newcastle protest group consists almost exclusively of Greens members. This week they were protesting that workers transitioning out of the local coal industry were being offered employment paths including into defence manufacturing”
I googled and guess who was front and center whinging about Labor and demanding an end to the program just in case someone ended up working in a weapons factory that might send something to Israel or the USA.
Old mate Corporal Shoebridge!
Cannot make this up. The Greens bitch and moan about Coal for decades and they finally get their wish, and even have a “populist” solution where the working class are supported by a Labor Government with help to transition and train into new industries, and it’s not good enough!
The Greens Political Party will never move forward while they link every policy whinge back to Gaza and where every economic policy ends with the working class getting sacked with zero replacement jobs because nothing is ever good enough for the upper class Greens leaders lounging in expensive inner city apartments living off dad’s trust fund and protest donations.
Confessions @ #2548 Thursday, April 16th, 2026 – 5:59 pm
Thank you for posting this. I encourage everyone to spend 50 minutes listening to this man. He has a breadth and clarity of understanding, purpose and focus that one can only envy. It extends outward from himself into geopolitics and the realities of war. And he’s a lovely man to boot.
EDIT: less than an hour
As A_E said every progressive policy goes and dies on the scrap heap of Israel-Palestinian quagmire
Wait, the Greens are a political party, you say? Not a birthday party or a D&D party or a sex party, but a political party!?
Now I understand why they have all of those politicians who stand for public office and sit in various parliamentary houses, I was so confused for a moment there!
It is extremely difficult to work out what is happening with respect to the SoH traffic.
It is likely that some ships are paying a toll and are being allowed through by both the US and Iran. The terms of the US blockade are that it would stop ships paying a toll to Iran. The technical problem may be proving that ships ARE paying a toll. It may be that the US is not all that interested in being in a position to do the checking.
It is likely that some Iranian ships and/or ships that have debouched from Iranian ports have been turned around at the direction of the US. It seems that these ships are not ‘forcing’ the US to board the ships in order to enforce the blockade. They are turning around. (It is possible that some of the transit numbers are actually double counts… with outbound ships going through the SoH, being turned around, and then going through the SoH inbound.)
It is possible, but uncertain, that one or two ships departing Iranian ports following the start of the blockade have been allowed through by the US. It is also possible that these have chinese ownership and crews but may be flying under flags of convenience. It may be that China is not yet ready to test US resolve to interdict chinese flagged, owned and crewed vessels departing Iranian ports.
It is possible that some unknown number of ships have passed through the SoH without Iranian permission so to do.
The total number of transits may be somewhere between ten and twenty ships a day with 14 being a possible number. If so, most of the latter are getting out because of Iranian toll paying. Apparently.
Much of this is speculative. It would be good to get a highly accurate account.
However, it seems extremely likely that the actual current daily traffic is equal to or less than 10% of peace time traffic. So the SoH is still, in terms of the global economy, effectively blocked.
Again, this is speculative, but none of Iran, China or the US seem at all keen to create a blockade-related incident that would lead to the resumption of live firing.
The assumption is that the three are interested in reaching a negotiated settlement rather than triggering another phase of the hot war.
Nearly all of the above is guesswork.
Kirsdarke @ #2602 Thursday, April 16th, 2026 – 8:13 pm
Our myths speak to us, and they identify us. I’m trying to remember the exact words about myths being someone else’s religion. That’s where they touch us. Myths define us. Those two blokes died not as fools but as heroes, in an heroic age long ago. We’re still looking for their like today. Why? Because myths sustain us and our heroes sustain our myths.
Kirsdarke:
In hindsight, it does really aggravate me how hyperfocussed primary school history lessons in the 90s – at least in Queensland – were on the gold rush, Burke and Wills, and several very specific parts of World War I, with a wee little bit on the first fleet and the sending of convicts over here.
Bugger all on indigenous history, the darker sides of early colonialisation, the Eureka stockade, burgeoning democracy in the then-colonies, Broken Hill and the other strikes that birthed the labour movement, the Boer Wars, Federation, the White Australia policy, motherfucking World War II, Petrov, the Cold War, Holt going for a swim, Wave Hill and the Gurindji campaign, the oil crisis, the Dismissal, pretty much anything at all that happened outside of Australia that wasn’t Gallipoli. I first learned who Edmund Barton and Alfred Deakin were from Wikipedia, for fuck’s sake!
I’d like to blame Howard, but I can’t help feeling this one falls just as much on Goss and Beattie. The Smart State, indeed….
Yes Asha, I know it’s odd, but the Greens Political Party often forget that they are in fact, a political party, and always talk about politics as if the Greens Political Party is in fact, not a political party, but something outside, different and better than the ALP and LNP that the Greens Political Party helpfully label “The Duopoly” because they think Scott Morrison & Tony Abbott are identical to Anthony Albanese & Penny Wong.
The strange thing is that Greens Political Party members get angry when you remind them that they are members of a Political Party. As you say, they stand for public office and sit in various parliamentary houses, yet they act like they don’t! And get angry when you do!
@Late Riser
Would be nice if we could have a new age of heroes where people who do the most amount of good to the most amount of people are regarded as such.
But with people like Trump, Musk, Thiel, Putin, Netanyahu, Big Gina, Big Clive and all the other rotten Hutts in human form ruling the world, seems less likely.
At least Orban being kicked from power out of Hungary in a landslide was a step back.
@Asha at 8:49pm
Meanwhile back down in Kennett’s Victoria, I think I was forced to learn more about Gallipoli and Burke & Wills more than the Eureka Stockade, and I went to school in Ballarat where it actually happened!
I’ll say this about Burke and Wills, though… at least they weren’t quite as stupid and unprepared as the absolute nitwit that Bob Katter’s electorate got its name from.
GoW
Keep the laughs coming. Your creative prose is amusing.
Is this where I point out I vocally never liked the Minns anti protest laws? I got the point made by Nadia and others that Sydney people were sick of the constant protest disruption and what Minns did would be popular (and it probably ends up being the court, not Minns that wears anger for blocking them now), and that even the laws being temporarily in place was a circuit breaker, I just didn’t and don’t like the precedent of government restricting protest that isn’t on genuine safety grounds to prevent crowd crushes etc. Even in the case of protests I think the advisors would be wiser not to run. So I’m happy for this result.
Oakeshott Country @ #2581 Thursday, April 16th, 2026 – 7:14 pm
Always was. Never in doubt.
“I first learned who Edmund Barton were from Wikipedia”
You don’t remember when Howard wasted millions of dollars on cringeworthy “Edmund Barton” ads?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkGEMYSgIo0
Howard didn’t say anything about Barton starting the White Australia Policy, but they were only 30 seconds long ads.
Kirsdarke, Yeah, that would be nice. But the really good things in life are done by countless ‘ordinary people’, not the occasional hero who happens to fit inside a myth. (Yes. I’m a cynic.) But the ‘bad guys’ have a part to play in our myths as well. Maybe that’s another way to look at the names you mentioned.
One of my favourite archival finds was seeing it written in the 1861 annual report of the Melbourne Observatory (which I was looking at for meteorological reasons) that they were having difficulties with staff shortages because Mr. Wills hadn’t come back from his exploring expedition, or words to that effect. When you see detailed accounts of the expedition the most surprising thing is that they got as far as they did.
I don’t remember learning much Burke and Wills at school in Victoria in the 80s/90s. I remember mostly knowing about them and Eureka and the crossing of the Blue Mountains many other things from a junior Australian history book we had at home.
Generally school seemed to ignore Australian history when I was passing through.
@Ghost – I have no recollection of the Howard ads mentioning Barton either.
GoW:
I don’t, actually. We didn’t have TV reception at our place until mid-2000.
Well Golly Gosh!
The political party I’ve been an active member of for more than a decade is a ….. political party!
I nearly spat out my almond mylk laté when I heard.
Ok, for a second I thought you were going to say something like “I was only born in 2004” and make everyone else here feel super old.
It’s all happening in the world of electoral happenings.
***
Bit of a comment from the VEC yesterday about the recent court decision in that jurisdiction.
“Statement about High Court decision – Hopper & Anor v State of Victoria
The Victorian Electoral Commission is aware that a decision was handed down today by the High Court of Australia.
We are considering the impact of the decision on our role as the responsible body for regulating Victoria’s political finance laws.
The VEC delivers electoral services and regulation in accordance with the Electoral Act. It is for Parliament to determine the legislation.”
https://vec.vic.gov.au/about-us/media/statement-about-high-court-decision
***
WA 2025 State Election Special Enquiry
https://www.elections.wa.gov.au/about-us/special-inquiry
Heaps of stuff there. Basically rebuild the Commission.
***
Seriously, can’t we move to a single national election management body. For real. Single election staffing model, single voting centre interface, single election / voting education effort, single overarching voting model enactment, single election information and results online information source, etc. etc.
It’s not rocket science. Literally.
And no, I don’t mean just extend the current AEC work to revamp their own systems. I mean fresh, involving everyone, from the very beginning.
GoW:
If you ever want to feel really old, just remember this:
There are currently legal adults out there right now who were born after Rudd became PM.
@Arky at 9:05pm
It really kicked up into gear after 1996 once Howard’s lot took over, and the only non-Coalition state was NSW.
Of course we were just kids and we had to do what we were told, so we obediently made up these project boards decorated with cotton, dried macaroni, stock photos and little text bubbles in how Gallipoli was our true first defining moment as an “independent nation” and that Burke & Wills were martyrs to colonial pioneering or whatever.
Kirsdarke:
I can’t really speak much for what school was like pre-Howard, as I was only in the third grade when he became PM and mostly focussed on Power Rangers and the multiplication tables at the time, but that does seem a fair assessment of the situation.
Fiona Katauskas – Angus and the Blowhards
The latest in the saga of incompetence at the Liberty manganese smelter at Bell Bay in Tassie: workers have been told by the administrator to take leave without pay or be sacked. Workers are owed about $7.4million at the moment.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-16/liberty-bell-bay-smelter-workers-face-being-stood-down/106571896
@Asha
Yeah, same, back in 1996 at least. But in 1998-99 in grades 5 and 6, that’s when I remember these things starting to be more important to teachers than they were for us.
In fact in 1999 the Grade 6 class was treated to a viewing of the 1981 Gallipoli film (with all the gory parts censored out of course) just to show how important it was to us as a nation apparently.
Kirsdarke:
Yep, exactly the same up here in QLD.
We didn’t watch the Mel Gibson Gallipoli until high school, but we did get to see some horrendously dull made-for-TV-movie about Burke and Wills in Grade 5. Our teacher fastforwarded through the single sex scene, sadly.
Asha @ #2614 Thursday, April 16th, 2026 – 8:49 pm
In Concord West school, in NSW, in 1953, we chanted: “I honour my God, I serve my King, I salute my flag.” Then, one morning, we came to school past Mr Collocott’s pharmacy cum newsagent, and the newspaper billboards said “The King is Dead, Long Live the Queen” and that very morning we chanted “I honour my God, I serve my Queen, I salute my flag.” Then we traipsed into our classes. There were 47 kids in mine. Mr O’Brien. Chain smoking. Ashing out the window.
A short time later we all lined up in Rothwell Park, and fainted in the heat while SHE zoomed past in a Land Rover. Ah, the loyalty.
Palpable. I can feel it now. /s
Social studies consisted of Captain Cook, Burke and Wills, Sturt , Hume and Hovell, Blaxland Wentworth and Lawson, Governor Macquarie (sheep), James Ruse (wheat, rust) and stump jump ploughs.
newspaper
Yes, aged up to 18 years and 5 and a bit months.
We have had six PMs since they were born. They maybe remember the last three.
The Tassie LNP haven’t got any money for sacked workers, but do have billions for the AFL.
Priorities.
@Asha at 9:21pm
Heh, wow, I never saw that one. Then again I went to a Catholic primary school so they were probably a hard “no” to showing us that in the first place.
Paul Keating says: “In trying to battle an extreme version of itself and the “dumb bigotry fantasy” of Hanson, the Liberal Party had fallen back to its default political policy: racism”.
Classic Keating.
https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/keating-attack-liberals-under-taylor-have-defaulted-to-racism-20260416-p5zoiw
“but we did get to see some horrendously dull made-for-TV-movie about Burke and Wills in Grade 5. Our teacher fastforwarded through the single sex scene, sadly.”
They were gay, Burke and Willis?
@Ghost of Whitlam at 9:33pm
Ooh, wouldn’t it piss off old Johnny Howard if they were?
Australian dollar close to 72¢ US, its highest in nearly four years: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-16/australian-dollar-surges-to-four-year-high/106571996
Fear and greed are alternating quickly these days.
GoW:
No, you’re getting confused with Gary Cooper.
Steve777 says:
Thursday, April 16, 2026 at 9:27 pm
“There are currently legal adults out there right now who were born after Rudd became PM.”
Yes, aged up to 18 years and 5 and a bit months.
We have had six PMs since they were born. They maybe remember the last three.
________
Now that is a thing. If not now, then shortly we shall have voters that do not remember a time before Abbott!
Howard’s Barton ads went something along the lines of “what was his hobby?” With the expected answer of “ a first class cricket umpire” but the real answer was that he was a first class piss artist
I’ve been to the Cooper Creek and the dig tree a couple of times now.
I’m a little baffled about their demise.
There’s plenty of plant and bird life. And the creek has been more like a river each time I’ve been.
I presume they had rifles. I’ve seen a replica of the bloody big boat they dragged along. Did they have a piano too or was that someone else?
And from memory they encountered locals. Were they not curious about how they survived?
Anyway easy to say from the comfort of an air-conditioned 4wd in the 21st century 🙂
Yeah I probably was forced to study them but it obviously didn’t stick.
Not sure if we saw the Mel Gibson Gallipoli in school, but I remember being bored shitless by Breaker Morant. It had Alf off Home and Away (which got a few giggles), and I can’t remember a single other thing about it.
One WA-specific thing my school went into detail on in about year 5 or so was the Batavia mutiny, off the coast of what’s now Geraldton. Europeans in Australia 150 years before Captain Cook and the First Fleet? Yes indeed. It’s actually a fascinating story – I’m surprised there hasn’t been a movie or miniseries about it, it’d make a good one. Apparently Russell Crowe has been attached to a possible one but it’s gone nowhere.
When I first became aware of the wider world, Robert Menzies a.k.a Pig Iron Bob had been Prime Minister forever. I remember seventeen PMs, some more fondly than others.
Chump and the MAGA acolytes are certainly dragging their country down.
The government’s travel advice includes “the US Government entered a partial shutdown on 1 February. This has affected some federal government services, including at airports. There may be flight delays, longer airport lines and travel connection times. Check with your travel provider to see if your travel plans have been affected. Avoid areas where demonstrations and protests are occurring due to the potential for unrest and violence. Monitor media for updates and follow instructions of local authorities.”
These sorts of warnings used to be for third world countries.
@GrannyAnny at 9:53pm
At this rate there’ll be a miracle if they don’t have a disaster with how thinly stretched they’re putting their air traffic control staff at.
Still nearly 3 years to go through this hell over there.
GrannyAnny:
Winning!
Roberts-Smith is applying for a special grant from the Cth to fund his criminal trial, known as:
https://www.ag.gov.au/legal-system/legal-assistance-services/commonwealth-legal-financial-assistance/afghanistan-inquiry-legal-assistance-scheme
It looks like his hitherto benefactor, Stokes, has pulled the pin on him. Where’s Rinehart when you need her?
____________________________________________________________
You’ve got to wonder about the quality of advice Minns received with the PARD scheme. It was flawed from the outset, a fact that was clear from the NSW Court of Appeal’s decision. He’d almost certainly lose again if he applied to the High Court. Yet another court struck down legislation based on the implied constitutional right to freedom of political communication in a representative democracy.