Today’s Courier-Mail brings a Galaxy poll of federal voting intention in Queensland, encompassing 800 respondents and presumably conducted over the past few days. The primary vote numbers are 44% for the Coalition, 36% for Labor, 10% for the Greens and 2% for Palmer United, compared with respective results at the 2013 election of 45.7%, 29.8%, 6.2% and 11.0%. This converts into a Coalition two-party lead of 51-49, a swing to Labor of 6% from the 2013 result.
A fair bit happening lately on the federal preselection front:
• Joanna Lindgren will fill the Queensland Senate vacancy created by Brett Mason’s appointment as ambassador to the Netherlands, after prevailing in a preselection ballot over seven rival candidates. Her win was achieved despite Tony Abbott, John Howard and Julie Bishop having backed Bill Glasson, an opthamologist, former Australian Medical Association president and twice-unsuccessful candidate for Griffith, firstly against Kevin Rudd in 2013 and again at the by-election held to replace him the following February. Lindgren has been described as a “project officer”, and is apparently the great-niece of former Liberal Senator Neville Bonner, Australia’s first indigenous parliamentarian.
• The Queensland ALP wrapped up preselection in nearly every seat that matters on Wednesday. Cameron Atfield of the Sydney Morning Herald reports the candidate for Forde in Brisbane’s outer south is Des Hardman, who made way for Peter Beattie’s unsuccessful bid for the seat in 2013. Laura Fraser Hardy, a lawyer, will make her second successive run against Liberal incumbent Ross Vasta in the bayside marginal seat of Bonner. The preselection of five out of Labor’s six lower house incumbents was also confirmed, including that of Wayne Swan in Lilley. The exception is Bernie Ripoll in Oxley, who will make way for Brisbane City Council opposition leader Milton Dick.
• A Liberal National Party preselection held this morning for Clive Palmer’s seat of Fairfax was won by Ted O’Brien, managing director of government relations firm Barton Deakin and the unsuccessful candidate in 2013. Others in the field were Peter Duffy, a construction manager; Don Jamieson, a banking manager; Chloe Kopilovic, a solicitor; Adrian McCallum, an engineering lecturer at the University of Sunshine Coast; and Mark Somlyay, an accountant and son of former member Alex Somlyay. Labor has preselected Scott Anderson, an IT consultant.
• Heath Aston of the Sydney Morning Herald reports that NSW Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon’s bid for another term is meeting resistance from no fewer than 16 rival preselection nominees. Among them are several colleagues of Rhiannon’s in the “hard left” faction, including Jim Casey, the state secretary of the Fire Brigade Employees Union, together with “James Ryan, Amanda Findley, Jane Oakley and Ben Hammond”. Also in the field are Cate Faerhrmann, who filled Rhiannon’s state upper house vacancy when she moved to the Senate in 2010, before abandoning it for an unsuccessful Senate bid in 2013; and Arthur Chesterfield-Evans, who held a state upper house seat for the Australian Democrats from 1998 to 2007.
• Sean Ford of the Burnie Advocate reports that Labor’s preselection candidates for the north-western Tasmanian seat of Braddon include Justine Keay, a Devonport alderman and electorate officer to Tasmanian Opposition Leader Bryan Green, and Themba Bulle, a Burnie general practitioner. The current Liberal member, Brett Whiteley, won the seat from Labor’s Sid Sidebottom in 2013.
• Labor’s candidate to run against Adam Bandt in Melbourne is Sophie Ismail, a Victorian Education Department lawyer and member of the Socialist Left faction.
Simon Katich@45
We also need to be careful about ‘consent’ and the definition of an adult.
The ball must be swinging late or Mccullum is ill. He is only striking at 80.
Oakeshott Country @ 41: “Voter gradient” (in the literature called “single-peaked preferences”) is a sufficient but not necessary condition for there to be a Condorcet winner. Clearly a candidate who gets a majority of first preferences is a Condorcet winner, regardless of whether or not the voters’ preferences are single-peaked.
Separate issue from same sex marriage (lest we connect them in a slippery slope argument) but I am personally not opposed to polygamy between consenting adults who are all aware of the situation and able to get out if they wish – much like how many practice polyamorous relationships.
davidwh:
I see a difference between someone who is already married marrying someone else without telling that other person they are already married, and a group of people marrying with each other’s knowledge and agreement.
Fess
A little story
When I was a practicing urologist I performed a prostate operation on a Muslim man in his 70s with a similarly aged wife. I told him that this would affect his ability to ejaculate and all went well. About 2 years later he came back to see me, with the wife as usual sitting in the background, to ask if he could have children. I said this was unlikely but asked why this was relevant given his wife’s age. The reply was that he was returning to Lebanon to marry a second, younger wife. We got on well so I asked how this would work out in Australia. Well it didn’t really matter as the marriage was religiously and legally valid in Lebanon. The Australian government knew that the threesome would be in a bigamous relationship but chose to ignore it and treat the second wife as omeone sharing their residence.
Simon Katich
You spoke ? BM just whacked a 6 into the crowd. Also it must 🙂
Agree Fess. I don’t know that society should prevent polygamy anymore that same sex marriages. It’s really up to consenting adults to make the choice. It would result in some interesting divorce settlements though 🙂
OC:
I guess they could’ve just explained the younger wife as a housekeeper or something, and nobody would be any the wiser.
davidwh:
Can you imagine the custody settlements too?
fess,
An Indian chap I know well once defended arranged marriage. His arguments were compelling. although his arguments were based on the premise that the marriages worked in certain cultures with specific economic and social adversities, this program challenges that; suggesting in many cases arranged marriages based on profiling and willing committed couples can work here. It also looks more deeply into what makes relationships work beyond the initial attraction, asking the question; is initial attraction a poor indicator to a good partner, and if so, why not profiled arranged partnering?
It could be really difficult on the children Fess.
Fess
Indeed and why I believe polygamy (with religiously valid marriages at least) is not rare in Australia.
Dealing one at time seems sensible.
McCullum out. I was just putting on my jacket to duck to the pub to watch.
SK:
If you’d grown up in a culture where arranged marriages were the norm, it would be something you’d expect for yourself one day I suppose.
I agree the concept of arranged marriage is interesting, but most long term relationships whether arranged or grown are based on more than just the initial attraction. That’s my experience anyways.
[Jon Williams @WilliamsJon · 1h 1 hour ago
#Ireland’s incredible journey: 22 years ago being #gay there was illegal. Today 1st country in world to #voteyes in gay marriage referendum!]
Yay Ireland.
QLD state galaxy poll
ALP 52 LNP 48
http://www.news.com.au/national/queensland/queensland-labor-failing-to-gain-popularity-off-the-back-of-annastacia-palaszczuks-positive-start-as-premier/story-fnii5v6w-1227366699318
i am against polygamy because it always seems to be about a man having many wives, not a woman having many husbands. It assumes a man has the resources to support many women, or is willing to sit at home while they work to support him. This indicates that polygamy entrenches the lower status of women and their unequal share of money and othe resources.
In Australia, a man can have one legal wife and three other ‘wives. IF each has a child, three can claim single mothers benefit, with him required to pay child support. If he does not work, there is none to pay. Don’t tell me this is not happening already.
Of course a man can have many partners. There is nothing preventing that. That is probably called a cult.
I consider polygamous marriage to be a throw back to less enlightened times when women could only exist in a man’s household, and when war reduced the male population, widows and orphan girls were allocated to already married men as acts of charity.
Polygamous marriage is demeaning and reduces woman to objects. Social recognition of this through legalising it just entrenches the worst of patriarchal attitudes towards women.
Leroy Lynch@68
Not since Der Stürmer at its worst has there been such mendacity as we see in News Corpse papers.
The headline and all that follows is just contrary to the facts.
Bemused @70:
I wonder what TPP indicator it would take, to get the Murdochracy to admit that the LNP has the stench of unelectability about it as long as the ‘Borg is LOTO?
Speaking of the ‘Borg, has he been pressured to resign over his borderline-criminal (ab)use of domestic violence complaints against another MP?
Puff @69:
I have no problem with polyandry. I’ll sign up to do the housework, even!
69
Puff, the Magic Dragon.
i agree
ptmd, surely the point about matrimony these days is that it should be between the free and the equal…each free to join and free to leave, equal in all things…polygamy could be freely joined, but surely it could never be equal….i suppose i could not know for sure, having never tried it…
70
bemused
Murdoch hates Labor…lies constantly…can’t wait for him to fall off the twig…
Russell Brand, former heroin and methyl amphetamine addict, is the greatest, English speaking thinker and futurist of our time.
If you doubt or disagree with this statement, then cut and past the following into a YOUTUBE search;
[Our mad max future Russell Brand]
The man is fucking brilliant.
Fucking, Brilliant.
“Any Green who preferences the Coalition in the next election is a mug.”
It’s a old one but “the worst Labor government is always better than the best LNP government.”
briefly@75
Why would any self-respecting journalist be prepared to put their name to such blatant lying and mis-representation?
Looks like FF have beaten FG in Kilkenny.
Albert NSW proves that is completely wrong.
davidwh@80
Not really. ICAC has caught crooks on both sides and I think more on the Lib side.
The difference where arranged marriages are traditional is that men and women are trained for specific roles in marriage, a bit like being trained for a trade. A girl’s whole upbringing is a long apprenticeship for the trade of Wife. She expects to play that trade whomever she marries. The boy is expected to learn to earn money to keep his household sustainable. Love is a bonus, friendship is desirable, but the whole thing can work. Even if the man or woman is a mean miserable intolerable guts-ache, I suppose a sort of Stockholm syndrome can occur.
bemused,
self respecting journalist? in the msm in Australia?
have you been on the funny mushrooms?
Post up on the Galaxy Queensland state poll:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2015/05/23/galaxy-52-48-to-labor-in-queensland-2/
79
The figures in so far are primary vote. Fianna Fail is ahead on those but Fine Gael is not all that far behind and apparently getting a strong flow from Sinn Fein.
I would welcome a gay marriage vote in Australia rather it be foisted upon us illegitimately in some false claim of “consensus”.
I’m neither for or against gay marriage though I do find some of the arguments from both sides to be nauseating.
Before I go kiss and cuddle my three little boys and my lovely young wife and go to sleep.
1. Prime Minister William Shorten will front the NPC in the middle of 2016 backed by his treasurer and his finance minister (probably Wayne Swan)
2. In 2016 the country will be in a recession, and a drought.
3. Opposition leader Scott Morrison will blame the balooning terms of trade deficit on former, former, former treasurer Paul Keating.
4. Wayne Swan will continue to be the 3rd most intellegent (after
Kevin rudd, leader of the Labor party.
4. Paul Keating will continue to be the most intelligent person ever, in the HISTORY OF STUFF THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED, anywhere, EVER, TO RUN A COUNTRY…
[86
TrueBlueAussie
I would welcome a gay marriage vote in Australia rather it be foisted upon us illegitimately in some false claim of “consensus”.
I’m neither for or against gay marriage though I do find some of the arguments from both sides to be nauseating.]
No-one claims there is consensus, but there is plenty to suggest there is a healthy majority in favour of reform. What bit of the reform argument do you reject? Lemme guess…probably the bit about equality of treatment under the law, seeing that you’re a Lib and therefore consider equality to be self-evidently unobtainable and in any case undesirable…that society works better if there is inequality in all things, even in such matters as matrimony…that really, we should be better off if marriage were considered to be a branch of property law, as was the case in the good old days…
87
Swan and Rudd are marked as not brilliant for their failure to go after the structural deficit they inherited from Howard and Costello in their first budget. Rudd is also marked as not brilliant for his poor handling of government and bad for his white-anting campaign against Gillard.
[78
bemused
Why would any self-respecting journalist be prepared to put their name to such blatant lying and mis-representation?]
Self-respect and working for Murdoch are mutually inconsistent. I guess working pays the bills, self-respect is a luxury his hacks cannot afford.
So proud to have Irish blood right now. 🙂
Well done Ireland! People should now ask why australia cannot have the same vote? Or are our political class too afraid of the will of the people?
And well done Anna Paluszczuk! PUP has shrunk into a yapping Chihuaha.
91
Tom the first and best
They should have reformed the tax system when they had the chance, GFC or no GFC…and they should have known the China boom could not last long. Had they shown any foresight at all on China and the aftermath of the GFC, they would not have been sucked into thinking they would be able to start running surplus budgets.
95
Hear, hear!
[94
Socrates
Well done Ireland! People should now ask why australia cannot have the same vote? Or are our political class too afraid of the will of the people?]
Maybe the Labor National Conference will support a plebiscite. TPOF points out that the Noes could get nasty…all the homophobes out in force, being as vile as can be…maybe he has a point…it would certainly put the political class on the spot…they would not like it at all..
Briefly
Probably true, but the point of democracy is not to give the political class a cosy job for life. It is supposed to be about the will of the majority.
Briefly 95
Also agree. I lamented here years ago the parking of the Henry tax review by Labor back in 2010. That decision cost both Australia and Labor in the end. I hold Rudd, Swan, Gillard and Abbott all responsible.
[96
Tom the first and best]
The LNP are not going to get even slightly close to running a balanced budget. As long as the deficit in national savings persists – which is a foregone conclusion – and as long as financial repression keeps private savings rates at elevated levels; as long as real per capita income growth stagnates, then the budget will remain in the red. This is completely inexorable.
One of the smarter banks – maybe Goldman Sachs – recently forecast the current account deficit will swell by 2017/8 to more than 5% of GDP, in which case the Commonwealth budget deficit would likely also run at about the same level. This lies ahead for us because the LNP do not know how to revive income growth or how to increase net national savings.