Some of the news that’s fit to print

It looked for a while as if Roy Morgan had returned to its weekly polling schedule, but that may have just been a short-term response to the stimulus package kerfuffle. In any event, there was no poll today. That being so, this week’s news nuggets will have to survive on their own:

• Alicia Bowie of the Campbelltown Macarthur Advertiser reports on Labor aspirants for Macarthur, whose Liberal member Pat Farmer has long since stopped behaving like a man who cares if he gets re-elected. The narrowly unsuccessful candidate from 2007, local carpenter Nick Bleasdale, is again in the running, but faces competition from Camden councillor Greg Warren. However, “the ALP will wait until the new boundaries are decided late this year before selecting its candidates for local electorates”.

• Col Allison of the Hills News reports that David Elliott, former Australian Hotels Association deputy chief executive and staffer to John Howard – or as Allison would have it, “the ambitious Liberal Party stalwart lusting for a parliamentary career”, – has denied he will stand for preselection in Brendan Nelson’s seat of Bradfield. However, “insiders say he will try to win preselection for a State Liberal seat in the North-West at the May 2011 elections, upsetting the ambitions of other card-carrying right-wing conservatives, or even a sitting MP”. The seats mentioned are Riverstone, which is reasonably safe for Labor, and “even Baulkham Hills, in the unlikely event Wayne Merton, decides to step down”. Allison reports that Elliott “has the support of MLC David Clarke, controversial leader of the so-called Christian Right of the party and a back-room wheeler-dealer”, which is odd because he was put forward as the moderate candidate against Clarke protege Alex Hawke in Mitchell before the 2007 federal election.

• Peter Tucker at Tasmanian Politics reports that Michael Ferguson, defeated in Bass at the 2007 federal election, will run for the state seat at the March 2010 election.

• Matthew Franklin of The Australian reports that “Kevin Rudd has renewed his backing for four-year, fixed parliamentary terms but refused to criticise Queensland Premier Anna Bligh’s decision to call a state election six months before it was due”.

• Alex Mitchell in Crikey tells us we should “forget the nonsense written in The Australian about an early election being impossible”, because “the advance of Costello has spooked Labor which is now quietly preparing for an early election later this year”. We’ll see.

• There is a Queensland state election campaign in progress.

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.

1,256 comments on “Some of the news that’s fit to print”

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  5. [The looming Victorian Liberal Friday fight over their Senate preselections reveals that Malcolm Turnbull is now the clear beneficiary of a permanent split in what was the Costello-Kroger faction.

    Some say this could represent a very serious problem for Costello’s ambitions for federal party leadership.]

    http://www.vexnews.com/news/3096/fight-night-costellos-ambitions-threatened-by-a-pro-turnbull-faction-in-his-own-state/

    Feel the love GP and Glen, feel it! 😀

  7. Centre’s comment at 1110 misses the point in a number of ways:

    Firstly, it puts up a strawman version of the argument I and others put forward. I never said binding shareholder votes was a panacea – in fact I said the exact opposite. If you want 80% tax rates and/or caps on pay, go for it. I don’t care. That doesn’t alter the principle that shareholders should be able to decide what to pay their CEO and Directors. (Though of course the tax idea is utterly ineffectual in the case of non-exec Directors).

    Secondly, the stuff about concentrations of shareholdings, whilst perfectly correct, is utterly irrelevant. If you think institutional shareholders would vote for large bonuses/pay rises to the people running a failing company, you’ve got rocks in your head. But atm those shareholders can only exert control by getting rid of the Board members – it’s way too blunt an instrument.

    Thirdly, you make a big deal of saying the binding vote idea is impractical (or “impracticle”). What you really meant to say is that you personally are not smart or well-informed enough to make that idea work. But others would be. For example: bonuses. The Board proposes levels of bonuses for itself and the CEO. The shareholders vote yes or no. If it’s no, then the bonus is nil. Pay rises could work similarly. It’s not all that monumentally hard!

    Fourthly, a cheap appeal to the PB commentariat by trying to characterise my view as one of “IDEOLOGY”. Leaving aside the fact that I am not an especially ideological person (my previous PB mutterings attest to this), this misses the blindingly obvious point that both major parties agree that “something needs to be done”. The discussion is up to the “how” stage. If you think this is now about ideology you’re just way off the pace, I’m afraid.

  8. Well if the Essential poll is anything to go by it seems the payslip beatup and a week of over the top phony outrage in QT reported for all it’s worth on the nightly TV news and the shameless promoting of Hockey by media hacks hasn’t done much for the Libs

  11. [Kathleen Parker in the WaPo suggests that he was forced by his stuff to “dumb himself down” for the speech. He certainly looked dumb, which he isn’t.]
    And it seems his staff told him to make things up.

  12. [Kathleen Parker in the WaPo suggests that he was forced by his stuff to “dumb himself down” for the speech. He certainly looked dumb, which he isn’t.]

    Well he is dumb if he thought dumbing it down was the answer. They already have Palin for that.

  13. [Well he is dumb if he thought dumbing it down was the answer. They already have Palin for that.]
    He is dumb for going on national TV saying that George Bush’s lack of response to Hurricaine Katrina is an example of how Government’s screw things up.

    He’s an idiot for having a Sarah Palin like contempt for scientific research by implying that money spent on detecting volcano eruptions is wasteful spending, especially when he lives in a town flattened by a natural disaster!

  19. [He certainly isn’t dumb: “the Rhodes Scholar Jindal, who was accepted to both Yale and Harvard medical and law schools”]

    Being educated does not mean you can’t be dumb

  22. Whether is the sanctimonious Hockey or the arrogant Turnbull prattling on, I still cant believe that these guys operate in such a vaccum. Have they NOTICED the opinion polls for the past 18 months?? I’d almost have a modicum of respect for them if they showed some contrition, ability for self-reflection or acknowledgement of the immense challenges they face. They act like the election was a mistake and soon people will notice and had government back to them. They are so BAD at opposition (not that they were that good at government either)

  24. [I’ve not spent much time getting up to date on internal issues bob1234]

    For your own sanity, i’d say that’s probably a good thing. Best to stear clear of it for say, oh, 13 years.

  25. Without restarting the IQ debate, Jindal is very bright using his IQ as a measure. It’s 146, which puts him higher than most past presidents except Obama and Adams.

  27. Boredom – more than anything – has led me to considering amusing (well, as amusing as electorial redistributions can get) amalgamations of electorates in the case of an election being called before the completion of a formal redistribution (as has been covered by Antony). Following all that?

    If an election was called tomorrow, the 2 smallest neighbouring electorates in NSW would be squished together to form 1. So, hypothetically, what if the 2 electorates were Calare and Hume? Bourke would be in the same electorate as Bowral.
    In other states, think about squishing Grey with Wakefield or Barker (Coober Pedy with Elizabeth or Mount Gambier); Maranoa with Wide Bay or Dickson. Birdsville would be in the same electorate as Noosa / Outer Brisbane.

    And yes, that IS probably the most insightful comment I will make today 😀

  30. They wanna be careful with Costello. Whilst he is around he can still say the wrong things at the wrong times that hurt the party. Turnbull and his supporters may think they have or will win something against Costello in their internal politics, but if Costello really dislikes Turnbull like Howard….

  32. dyno @ 1157.

    “If you think institutional shareholders would vote for large bonuses/pay rises to the people running a failing company, you’ve got rocks in your head”

    Have you been living in a cave or something? That’s the whole problem. Companies paying their executives massively grossly obscene salaries where the company has been performing poorly!

    Ahh impractical. Diogenes why am I getting these mental blocks? It’s been happening regularly for about the last 6 months?

  33. [They wanna be careful with Costello. Whilst he is around he can still say the wrong things at the wrong times that hurt the party. Turnbull and his supporters may think they have or will win something against Costello in their internal politics, but if Costello really dislikes Turnbull like Howard….]

    But it’s funny when the Liberal Party is in disarray 😀

  34. Centre, the shareholders don’t currently vote in any meaningful way on exec or Director pay. They can only exert control by sacking the Directors. It’s too blunt an instrument.

    This is a cultural problem. Like any cultural problem it won’t be solved in one fell swoop. But one of the key elements is that the people who run companies have forgotten that they are there to serve shareholders, not the other way around. Giving shareholders power over CEO and Director pay would send a very powerful message to the management, right where it hurts.

  37. I believe you may be a Costello admirer, but I now think it’s time for him to go (or announce that he’s going at the next election).

    His performance during this Parliamentary term has been crushingly disappointing.

  39. [We were never in disarray under Howie mark 2 🙁 (shakes head)]

    Yeah, it took 13 years of Labor government and Howard’s small-target strategy of not releasing any policies prior to the election. Unlike Rudd who released comprehensive policies.

  41. I was at Martin Place (sydney) sipping coffee this morning and guess who walked pass. It was Howie, in a suit and he looked like he just been to a job interview.

  43. [It was Howie, in a suit and he looked like he just been to a job interview.]

    I’d check the mercury content in the tuna that your eating Finns.
    🙂

  44. We’re not “in disarray” now. We are passing through an economic crisis caused by the failed economic policies of conservative politicians. We have a social democratic government which is firmly in charge and putting in the place the correct policies on the best of advice.

  45. OK dyno, we will see what transpires over the global talks on the issue?

    I happened to catch PM Agenda. Can you believe the Liberals are trying to say that they predicted the global fallout at the time Swan was saying inflation was out of control? There they go again, trying to have a bet after the race is run. No shame the Liberals – no shame!

  46. Centre

    Mental blocks are due to retrieval failure. For some reason the cues you are using are only incompletely activating those memories. You are probably much better multiple choice questions than simple QANDA.

  47. [I was at Martin Place (sydney) sipping coffee this morning and guess who walked pass. It was Howie, in a suit and he looked like he just been to a job interview.]

    I guess you didn’t have time to stick your leg out?

  48. [It was Howie, in a suit and he looked like he just been to a job interview.]

    He probably did very well. He was good at making his government sound like it achieved a lot when infact it achieved very little.

  50. My wife is a qualified psychologist and was giving an IQ test to a lad one day.
    One of the questions was [paraphrasing] “What does a carpenter do?” followed by multiple choice options that included the ‘correct’ answer and a wrong one “Works on the roofs of houses”. Which was the answer the lad gave. Later she asked him why he said that and he replied ‘Cos my dad is a carpenter and he works on the roofs of houses”.

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