While you wait:
• The media has finally awoken to the possibility the Steve Fielding might yet win the race for the final Victorian Senate seat, which is the only result of the election still in doubt. The ABC projection has John Madigan of the Democratic Labor Party winning the seat after narrowly escaping exclusion at “count 21”, where he keeps ahead of Fielding with 3.29 per cent of the vote against 3.14 per cent. If Fielding gets ahead – and there is reason to think name recognition will boost him on below-the-line preferences – it will be he rather than Madigan that snowballs to victory with the help of the other preferences. However, Antony Green reckons it more likely whoever gets ahead will ultimately land short of the third Coalition candidate, Julian McGauran, who will benefit from the Coalition’s traditional strength on late counting. More from Andrew Crook at Crikey. Those wishing to discuss the Senate count are asked to do so in the dedicated post below.
• Government formation negotiations have turned up a number of agreements on campaign finance and electoral reform. The Labor-Greens alliance proposes that the two parties will “work together” to enact reforms that were blocked in the Senate last year by the Coalition and silly Steve Fielding: lowering the threshold for public disclosure of donations from $11,500 to $1000, closing the loophole that allows separate donations below the threshold to be made to multiple state party branches, shortening the gap between receipt of donations and disclosure, tying public funding to genuine campaign expenditure, banning foreign donations and banning anonymous donations over $50. Julia Gillard has said the deal she has offered to the independents, which has not been made available to the public, is along the same lines. According to The Age, “Tony Abbott has signalled he is prepared to consider significant reform but is yet to reveal the specific options he is putting to the three rural independents”.
• Also in the Labor-Greens agreement is a promise to “consider” a long-standing Greens private members bill which proposes to abolish the “just vote one” above-the-line Senate option that commits the voter to the party’s registered Senate ticket, to be replaced with preferential ordering of at least four party boxes above the line (seven at double dissolutions). This would result in votes exhausting where no further preference is indicated, rather than locking every vote in behind the sometimes highly obscure candidates who survive to the final stages of the count.
• Labor and the Greens also promise to “work together” to enforce “truth in advertising”, which the Greens have been very keen on since Labor targeted them with a smear campaign before the March state election in Tasmania. Establishing the terms of such a measure would be highly fraught, as noted recently by Robert Merkel at Larvatus Prodeo.
• Labor has agreed only to “investigate” the possibility of legislated fixed terms; the rural independents are calling for the length of the current term to be set by “enabling legislation or other means”.
• Tim Colebatch of The Age fancies Senate figures suggest Labor should ultimately win the two-party arm wrestle, the results of which won’t be known to us for at least a month.
• Tasmanian firm EMRS has published one of its regular polls of state voting intention, which has the Liberals down from 39.0 per cent at the election to 35 per cent, Labor down from 36.9 per cent to 34 per cent, the Greens up from 21.6 per cent to 26 per cent – overstatement of the Greens being a feature of EMRS polls. The firm suffered a further dent during the federal election campaign when its poll failed to detect the strength of support for Andrew Wilkie.
[feeney,
They follow Bismark’s (or was it Moltke the Elder’s?) definition of war.
It is a continuation of policy by other means…especially if no-one you care about is at the pointy end.]
Clausewitz.
Bloody hell. Lee and Plato!
Very much a fan of the “guided” society, aren’t you?
[Dont you mean pluto?]
Ever since that thing which was known pluto was deplaneterised I know no other pluto….
I notice Fielding first may get to keep his seat….. got to love musical chairs…. but the songs goes on for too long… a bit like Stairway to heaven or a bat outta hell….
How about Entsch he’s just had a big holiday and has got nothing to do for three years except look at how well Katter does?
Gweneth
Perhaps a timely question to Minchin about Goblin Grech. 🙂
[ It is really all about being in power for too long – all power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. A very old saying and overused, but nonetheless true.]
Askin was in power for less than 10 years. It wasn’t about the time he spent “in power” and how he got into power. he was on the take from day 1.
TSOP
I agree with your assessment. I am quietly confident that it will go Labor’s way. I know I was wrong re election 80 seats remember. Lol!
Re #3669. I shared a house with Mark Simkin in the 1990s and he would be in his 40s. He was not at all right wing then.
Nah. Australian swing voters really don’t seem to be that bothered by ideology. We thought Abbott being far right would’ve killed him before he left the gate, it didn’t. The Libs thought scare mongering about Rudd and Labor being leftists in 07 would hurt them but it also didn’t.
In reality, if you are bothered by someone’s ideology, you won’t vote for them anyway. The Libs are just getting desperate by painting Gillard Labor as extremely left wing, when in alliance with the Greens.
William,
Bugger. Wrong twice over in just a few words. Thanks anyway!
Well, I’m sure the pair of them would have said it a few times during their careers…
Victoria,
[it is finals fever here in Victoria with the AFL. The meme by the coalition over the weekend, won’t have any impact around these parts. Also, State of Victoria is on high alert for floods over the weekend. Apparently, we can expect rain that has not been had here in 15 years. Doubt the voters of Victoria will blink.]
I’m pretty sure they’ve planned a longer-term strategy than just this weekend. I see the seeds being planted of a mantra that they will reprise again and again ad nauseum (with the abetance of the media) for however-long a Gillard government runs (supposing a Gillard government is what we get).
“The most left-wing government since Whitlam”. Expect to hear it till your ears bleed in the months ahead if Julia gets up.
TSOP
Actually it is amazing to watch how unhinged the coalition have become over the past few days.
Maybe the media doesn’t want to talk too much about the costings issue in the short-term, but in the long-term it’s not going to go away. This period of political history will be raked over for years, like the Labor split of 1955 and the dismissal. And if the independents decide to side with the ALP, there is already enough on the public record to suggest that costings will have been one of the important influences on their decision. For that reason alone, it can hardly fail to be something that Messrs Abbott, Hockey and Robb will have to live with for a long time. The media like simple explanations, and the simple explanation here will be that Mr Abbott blew it by getting the figures wrong, resisting scrutiny of them in an implausible way, and finally being caught out.
That line from one of michael moores movies comes to mind, wtte –
“Why is it that the first to stand up to go fight america’s wars are those who
gain the least from our society, ie the poor, the least educated etc.”
Also think he said there were only two members of congress and the senate who had children on active service in Iraq & Afghanistan. GW Bush & Cheney both ducked vietnam serice but were happy to send other peoples children off to be killed.
[How about Entsch he’s just had a big holiday and has got nothing to do for three years except look at how well Katter does?]
There was a classical english literature work that mentioned great big trees that could walk called ents… the name of the book escapes me, but the euclidean parallels are mind knumbing.
[I won’t comment on Askin – because of libel laws.
A good principle, deewhytony, but I think you can rest easy in relation to Askin.]
deewhytony, I’m from that era too. If you said something nice about Askin, that would be treated as libel.
Cuppa
I agree with you in that regard. That is why I believe KOW have taken as long as they have to make a final decision. They have drawn the coalition out from the dark and exposed their rhetoric into the fullness of light, just like Wilkie did yesterday. It cannot be underestimated the damage to the coalition’s credibility that has been bestowed upon them in the past few days. Thanks to the strategy that has been played. The coalition are playing checkers against a team that is playing chess. They have been well and truly checkmated.
Wal
lord of the rings
the Ents were the tree beings
[The coalition are playing checkers against a team that is playing chess. They have been well and truly checkmated.]
Thats because Gillard took their queen.
wal kola
You are wise to take your political advice from Plato – he had a good teacher 🙂
Though I quite like that young Aristotle’s point of view.
[If you said something nice about Askin, that would be treated as libel.]
I’ve never heard anything nice about Askin.
[Ever since that thing which was known pluto was deplaneterised I know no other pluto….]
It should never have been a planet in the first place, it’s just a small chunk of rock and ice that was a bit of an accidental find because astronomers of the day thought there’d be another big planet out there. The hysteria of the discovery led them to automatically class it as a planet. While it was a weird moment “declassifying” it was the best thing to do, otherwise we’d suddenly have to start saying that every reasonable sized chunk of rock orbiting the sun was a planet.
Fair enough you know him, he just looked pretty young to me yesterday.
[Thats because Gillard took their queen]
Prissy????
9 pm Update
1) Now 60 hours into my No Sleep Until Tony Loses Marathon – with PBers permission I think I’m going to declare Tony the moral loser and go to sleep tonight.
2) Still waiting for the editor of the Australian to ring me back about my complaint about right woing bias in his paper – hope he doesn’t ring while I’m asleep
TSOP
Charon would argue differently
[Actually it is amazing to watch how unhinged the coalition have become over the past few days.]
They always seem unhinged to me.
[jenauthor
T’other problem Tony has, is that he has conned himself.
Thus he has blundered in in full combat rig, rather that using the diplomatic route. In essence, as I think someone else said, he still thinks he is fighting the election, and because his tactics there seemed successful, he uses them as a template for all future battles. Which just goes to show, old dogs sometimes are better off rolling over and playing dead.]
I suspect he is already fighting the next election. He knows he has lost this round: he cannot give KOW what they want and they don’t like what he’s got. But, ever the pugilist, he is in training for the next bout.
TSOP
I can’t take you seriously, when I look at your adorable avatar!
[I’ve never heard anything nice about Askin.]
Didn’t he invent that diet called askin’s diet??
[The hysteria of the discovery led them to automatically class it as a planet. While it was a weird moment “declassifying” it was the best thing to do, otherwise we’d suddenly have to start saying that every reasonable sized chunk of rock orbiting the sun was a planet.]
Yeah… the orbit of pluto should of given it away…. Its the Muttiah Muralidharan of astronomy….
Originally “ent” was an old Germanic word simply meaning “giant”.
Regarding Vietnam, this is the bit I find most damning: Menzies lied about us ever having to go there in the first place. 521 Aussies killed for a politician’s lie.
[In April 1965, Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies announced the government had received from South Vietnam a request for further military assistance. “We have decided…in close consultation with the Government of the United States—to provide an infantry battalion for service in Vietnam.” He argued that a communist victory in South Vietnam would be a direct military threat to Australia. “It must be seen as part of a thrust by Communist China between the Indian and Pacific Oceans” he added.[20] It is now accepted that the South Vietnamese did not make such a request at this time, and against considerable advice from the Defence Department, Australian politicians made the decision, coinciding with the US commitment of combat troops earlier that year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Australia_during_the_Vietnam_War%5D
[Its the Muttiah Muralidharan of astronomy….]
you turning on chuck now?
[TSOP
Charon would argue differently]
Charon, Nix and Hydra are idiots. They’re moons of a dwarf planet. Talk about anchoring yourself to a loser.
Although fortunately for Charon, as soon as there is an accepted definition for binary dwarf planets, it’ll likely be elevated to the status of Pluto’s twin. So it’ll get a slight promotion.
VP
Good night. Sleep tight.
What? Nice, but not the genuine article, and propped up by the misplaced favour of officialdom…
[ The coalition are playing checkers against a team that is playing chess. They have been well and truly checkmated. ]
They are more like one of those chess players that just randomly advances with no particular game strategy except to attack. Not checkmate yet but the pieces are being arranged.
[LBJ in the limo with askin in george street sydney ,telling their driver to run, run the bastards over (ie the protestors) ]
I was 15 at the time. Walked straight out of a cinema after seeing “They’re a Weird Mob” into the crowd along the street waving American and Australian flags just as the official motorcade went by!
Strange times to grow up in.
A couple of years later I had hooked into one of the Sydney Uni protest marches that was busted up by Askin’s finest. After people had scattered I walked into a side lane and there was a paddy wagon with one of the protestors being held down on its back step by a couple of cops. There were about fifteen more of them in the lane lined up on each side of the wagon, each taking turns to run in and plant the boot into into the poor guy, all badgeless, of course. I wish I could say that I did something, but I just ran off when they saw me.
In one of Moratoriums (probably the second. I was still in school , but only just) me and a couple of close friends were heading up George Street somewhere near Wynyard with the throng. We’d all been forced back onto the footpath and couple of people had been pushed into windows and display cases by the police when they sent in a “flying wedge” to try to make life even more uncomfortable. A very pregnant woman in front of us went down in the push and one of my friends bent over to help her up. The cops descended, and arrested both her and my friend. He was charged with being out in the middle of the street throwing punches at the police.
Tony Blackshield, who was working for the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, got him off on the charge (the cops hadn’t got their notebooks straight) but his staunch DLP parents refused to believe him, or me, or any of our other friends, or the magistrate’s decision and chucked him out of their house, just a few weeks before we were sitting for our HSC exams, so he came and lived with us for the next couple of years.
We were the one of the last “age cohorts” to go through the conscription ballots before Whitlam saved the day. Caused great dilemmas for us all about whether to register and conscientiously object, to refuse to register but keep it quiet, to refuse to register and make a fuss about it, or to simply register and apply for an academic exemption once it looked likely that labor would win the election. But that’s a story for another time!
[you turning on chuck now?]
No machang; Im justing giving an illusistration of what I was saying.
Never a drug cheat, though.
And if he was he certainly didn’t blame it on his mother!
I like my new gravatar – Butterfly Nebula – astronomy is lovely.
[TSOP
I can’t take you seriously, when I look at your adorable avatar!]
Yes, GIR. He’s a robot from a cartoon called “Invader Zim” and he’s absolutely adorable in it. (In that picture he is in his dog disguise he has to wear in the open to avoid being noticed by people)
Indeed victoria @3700 – so what to ask Mr Minchin in that case?
So the right has won Cairns, Townsville, Bowen, Mackay.Gladstone,Bundaberg, Maryborough, Gympie, Maroochydore and Brisbane while the left has won Government, the Senate, and on the verge of enough votes to fend off a no confidence motion. Sounds good to me. Katter is going to have a lot of sad sacks to laugh at for the next three years.
[They are more like one of those chess players that just randomly advances with no particular game strategy except to attack. Not checkmate yet but the pieces are being arranged.]
Apparently I heard that NSW labor Mps and Fred Nile’s Group (is that like the John Butler Trio?) got into trouble knicking all the pawns… shame…
who would want to play chess against this lot?
[Now 60 hours into my No Sleep Until Tony Loses Marathon – with PBers permission I think I’m going to declare Tony the moral loser and go to sleep tonight.]
Yes, please. Sleep very well.
And your avatar is awesome. The butterfly nebula is pretty.
Gweneth
Mr Minchin will your party agree to behave with integrity during the next three year terms of government for the benefit of the Australian people?
[What? Nice, but not the genuine article, and propped up by the misplaced favour of officialdom…]
Rangatunga == God! 😉
He is the sports minister these days…. got into trouble for hitting a few people over the head with a cricket bat too…
TSOP
What is the weather like in SA?
[TSOP
What is the weather like in SA?]
Very stormy.
Lots of thunder in the arvo. Now just very rainy and heavy winds. (Knocking on wood hoping nothing gets damaged)