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.
Thanks BK
Order has been restored. 😀
Thanks BK! Hope you are well. Have a good day all.
I didn’t wake up until 0600 this morning and there was a bumper crop of stuff to go through.
It was good to get a decent sleep though.
Tony,
I can tell you how to prevent young Muslims being radicalised.
STFU!
Morning BK.
Rowe is brilliant as usual!
Regarding the GST on sanitary products: This also applies to older men and women, and if they suffer from incontinence the products are permanently in use. Just sayin’.
Hartcher
[Tony Abbott won an election promising to help families cut their power bills by getting rid of the carbon tax. He kept his promise. Electricity prices fell by an average of 9 per cent.]
What 9%? My elec bill has just gone up and up and up (to quote the Master).
William, Cate Faehrmann won’t be running for preselection for a NSW Senate position according to her social media pages. She is taking the position of chief of staff to Richard Di Natale.
Apologies if previously posted.
BK
Once again the cartoonists sum up the state of play perfectly
KatrinaIffland
@Tony_Burke confirms complete #Natsem modelling will be posted on Internet by @AustralianLabor
[The treasurer had to surrender to the moment, apparently creating policy on the hop with a pledge to scrap GST on tampons.]
He didn’t. He said he’d take it to the States. That way he can blame them when it doesn’t happen.
Seriously, this is one of the oldest brush offs in the book, going back to when your dad said “I’ll ask your mother”. We all know what that meant.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/qa-the-many-faces-of-postbudget-treasurer-joe-hockey-20150526-gh9gbe.html#ixzz3bBwCEI9I
zoomster
Is it possible for Shorten to make a strong protest? Yesterday Abbott mocked the Opposition throughout (not necessarily forbidden) and answered no questions, and Bronnie doesn’t even let Oppn members speak.
http://theaimn.com/the-bear-pit-called-question-time/
Three hats in the ring for Liberal preselection for Indi
http://www.bordermail.com.au/story/3103307/new-man-has-eyes-on-indi/?cs=11
This is a very small field compared to the last Liberal preselection, in the lead up to 2001, where there were several candidates, most of them local.
The most recent State preselection had a huge field.
Don’t know whether this means it’s a stitch up, all the local talent has joined the Nats, or that the Libs have written the seat off.
Probably a mixture of the first two. Abbott is still leader and he was responsible for Mirabella getting preselected last time.
zoomster:
To me it looks like everyone is expecting Mirabella to be preselected so why bother nominating.
Even if gst was scrapped on tampons. It would barely be a saving of 50 cents per pack. Big deal! For eg the price of meat has gone through the roof. For a basic kilo of bbq lamb chops these days is costing about $15.00. for a country whose main production is that of meat. Wtf!
Does it get more arrogant and out of touch than this?
[Host Tony Jones then asked Mr Hockey about a News Corp Australia article saying Mr Hockey had claimed more than $100,000 in allowances relating to a house owned by his wife.
“The figures they had was you claimed up to more than $100,000 in allowances relating to that. Did that go into the mortgage?” Jones asked.
“Well, Tony, I don’t know. I pay rent,” Mr Hockey replied.
“You pay rent to your wife?” Jones asked.
“Is there a problem with that?” the treasurer shot back.
Jones then brought the treasurer back to the original question – whether struggling home owners would find it acceptable that politicians get a taxpayer-funded subsidy for buying a house.
“Hang on, it is not a taxpayer-funded subsidy because we actually have to rent,” Mr Hockey said.
“So politicians that go to Canberra, they live in their electorates, if they go to Canberra, they pay rent or go to a hotel room.
“I don’t know, does the ABC do that when you travel?” Mr Hockey asked Jones.
“They do, but the hotel is not owned by my wife,” Mr Jones replied.]
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/28220263/hockey-fields-taxing-questions-on-q-a/
Is that fraud? Is it rorting? Is it double, even triple dipping?
Hockey started with a bit of a fib last night and no-one picked up.
He claimed that Government borrowing had fallen to $96,000,000 a day.
Weekly borrowings are up to $1.7 billion a week.
Divided by seven gets you a borrowing figure of over $200,000,000 a day.
victoria:
[Families are copping an expensive double whammy, at bowsers and in shopping centres, that threatens to get worse and undermine the economy.
Spiralling petrol prices are costing families at least $35 extra a month, while the failure of big banks to pass on interest rate cuts is reaping a $2.1 billion windfall at the expense of consumers.
Figures from the Australian Institute of Petroleum show that last week unleaded petrol in Perth averaged 136.8 cents a litre, a 0.2 cents increase over the previous week. It is the highest price since December.]
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/28220444/hip-pockets-battered-as-costs-bite/
Good to see the union movement is up and about preparing a marginal seat grass roots campaign going into the next election. If the outstanding success of their anti workchoices campaign is anything to go by they should be able to make a significant impact.
Whether it will be enough to bring down the government remains to be seen, but there’s certainly plenty of dissatisfaction out there for them to work with.
[“I don’t know, does the ABC do that when you travel?” Mr Hockey asked Jones.
“They do, but the hotel is not owned by my wife,” Mr Jones replied.]
Best put-down yet. I forgive you your past sins, Tony.
fess
What really irks me is that this govt have the gall to get a senior cop on the beat to ensure that people on the dole are not rorting the system. For goodness sake, the dole is barely $240 per week. Hockey claims more than that per night for living in his wife’s home. Who are the ones sponging off the taxpayer.
lizzie
A brilliant put down indeed!
Sorry to keep going on about the preview button not working, but I want to get an idea of whether it is just me, or whether other posters are also finding it won’t work for them.
Next time you do a post could you please give it a shot and let me know if you are affected.
victoria:
Yep, as is often the case, those who scream the loudest about people bludging off taxpayers are invariably the first to stick their hands out for their own piece of taxpayer funded largesse.
Like PvO tweeted last night, it’s one thing for MPs to claim expenses but quite another when they are claiming expenses to stay in accommodation owned by their spouse!
[ Host Tony Jones then asked Mr Hockey about a News Corp Australia article saying Mr Hockey had claimed more than $100,000 in allowances relating to a house owned by his wife.]
There is *MORE* to this Canberra house and it was covered in the media some years ago.
Hockey and his father (a long time Real Estate agent) noticed a ‘For Sale’ sign out the front. The vendor refused to deal with any Real Estate agents – had a real hate for them – and lawyers.
Long story short – is the father being a Real Estate agent was not disclosed to the vendor who had little idea of the market value of the property – result the hockeys (a lawyer) got the place for a song. Not suggesting any illegality.
Think the media back then reported ownership was Mrs Hockey 5/8ths, hockey 2/8ths and his father 1/8th or something like that.
So…unless that has changed, Hockey may be paying rent to himself ??
And he talks about learners.
Darn:
It works for me.
Surely an economically rational government could make a rule that if the house the pollie lives in is owned by self or family member, the allowance is halved?
That might save enough to allow more funds for the sick and poor.
fess
No doubt Labor Mps probably do the same. But they are not the ones accusing people of being leaners and rorters. What comes to mind is the saying
“Do as i say and not as a do”
Oops
“Do as I say, and not as I do”
Bw
[Hockey started with a bit of a fib last night]
How surprising.
It would appear that economist Stephen Koukoulas is far from impressed with the guest for Q and A next week.
[Sloan on @QandA next week? What next? Mickey Mouse to discuss global military tensions? That is really embarrassing #qanda]
Alan Moir on being unAustralian.
The music is still playing – Shanghai up 3.4% yesterday alone and up 11.4% in the last 5 working days –
[ Chinese IPO 826 Times Oversubscribed
Reuters reports (reporting by Hong Kong and Singapore newsrooms),
Shandong Shihua Shenghua Group Co Ltd says online part of Shanghai IPO attracted interest amounting to 825.91 times amount on offer.
This will end well… we are sure. ]
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-25/chinese-ipo-826-times-oversubscribed
There is a certain – depressing – ring to the ‘Abbott keeping his options open for more troops on the ground in Iraq’ comment doing the rounds at the moment.
How often does it all start with ‘some advisers to train’, followed by ‘some air support’ followed by ‘a request from our biggest and most important ally’, to get us stuck in yet another futile mini-war?
Time and again we have had this sequence fed us – Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Iraq again.
While some of the above may have had some legitimacy – Korea? – the others neatly fall into the sequence of toe in the water stuff to full blown engagement.
It is rich now, after the US has spent billions/trillions in Iraq for 12 years for both the US, and what passes as the Iraq government, blaming one another for the failed policy. This failure based on the total lie of Weapons of Mass Destruction foisted on us and dishonourably accepted by the Three Amigos – looks like cranking up again.
And we, or at least our pathetic PM, is up for it again.
Boerwar@1067
I was wondering about that too. Just didn’t add up.
Schadenfreude George
21s21 seconds ago
Schadenfreude George @GeorgeBludger
“@9NewsAUS: Same-sex marriage likely ‘within a year’: Turnbull. #9News ”
#NBN unlikely within any year.
Wong and Bernardi are heading for a dust up at Estimates.
@Victoria/1086
Yup, NBN at snails pace.
Good Morning
Bk
Glad you got some proper sleep and I hope you do not need the cortisone tablets again.
A good example of how Abbott is going directly opposite to what this country is about.
@smh: ‘Offensive and sad’: Parliament House architect Romaldo Giurgola slams fence plan http://t.co/dQgNV4cq4u #auspol
Meanwhile competitors in England are rolling out FTTP at fast speed:
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2015/05/truespeed-deploying-10gbps-fibre-optic-broadband-to-north-east-somerset.html
guytaur
Well, I suppose a tall fence is one up on Howard’s fridge magnet.
[ @smh: ‘Offensive and sad’: Parliament House architect Romaldo Giurgola slams fence plan http://t.co/dQgNV4cq4u #auspol ]
If it keeps the parliamentarians in, then I am in favor of it.
victoria@1030
I am quite concerned about the timing of that series. (Not suggesting any skullduggery by the ABC, it is just an unfortunate coincidence of timing.)
Hope Labor are ready for it, and an early election by Abbott to exploit it.
@Adam_Creighton: Forget spending cuts, tax increases doing all the work to reduce deficit: Grattan http://t.co/PuxpR6vbZ2
Good to see Grattan reporting the truth. Canberra Press Gallery will notice.
Just Me
The shorts I have seen show Rudd sarcastic against Gillard. So ABC have picked out something which suggests there’s a lot of aggro in the series. This may be just to encourage viewers.
May I confess that I do not like Cormann? He is a political robot.
jm and lizzie
ABC has to attract viewers. Voters had enough and we got Abbott as a result so you can expect that except for political tragics there will not be many viewers.
This in fact is bad as I am sure that the series is more balanced than what the media will report about it.
guytaur
Media will report… Hmm… I think you’re right.
Wong is getting very stroppy with Cormann.
So, where is the ABC series “At home with Tony and Margie?”
Oh, wait – I suppose they couldn’t make that one since they don’t actually live together.