Federal election minus whatever

A new venue for general discussion of matters political, as the New South Wales election sucks the oxygen from the federal sphere.

Reflecting its confidence about its prospects in Victoria, Labor has traded in its existing prospect for the seat of Higgins, Josh Spiegel, for a higher profile model in the shape of barrister Fiona McLeod. That’s all I really have to relate at the moment, but a new federal politics and general discussion thread is required, and here it is. Note the new Brexit post from Adrian Beaumont below this one and, naturally, the latest New South Wales election post above.

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.

606 comments on “Federal election minus whatever”

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  2. Woke up early due to incredible lightning display. Apparently it started at around 4 am and has only just stopped here.

    Fortunately accompanied by plenty of rain so hopefully won’t be fires.

    Nothing except a very small chance of showers had been predicted for the next few days!

    We seem to be increasingly getting these unpredicted storm events.

  3. Conor @ #39 Friday, March 22nd, 2019 – 9:26 am

    I’m pretty sure the morning fix that normally ends up on the main thread accidentally got posted to the NSW State thread this morning.

    Looking forward to the Feds after this week in NSW. Hopefully Shorten holds up better than Daley does, I can put up with Gladys, put Morrison is so painful Im not sure I’d cope with another three years.

    Speak for yourself. An LNP victory in NSW would not only give us 4 more years of cronyism and incompetence, but prove that our corrupted MSM still has some influence.

  4. Morrison’s interview with Aly was hardly convincing. FauxMo’s a lying shit, who’d jump at the chance to denigrate Muslims for political gain. This man, his party must go.

  5. Zoomster,
    Those storms are not unexpected, this is completely consistent with the predictions of the climate scientists.
    When I renovated I ensured the drains for my roof were able to deal with tropical storm level downpours, this is Melbourne.
    The predictions were fewer rain events, more drought but when rain occurred it was going to be destructive and not be as beneficial, more runoff and less soaking into the ground

  8. “SF @ 8.41

    Did you mean to say Shorten, or did you mean Turnbull?”

    Shorten I’m afraid. Bill’s not very good at faking sincerity either. he’s got better at it. Turnbull was full of shit in my eyes (as was Rudd – even before he was LotO I saw him on Sunrise and thought ‘phony’), but people bought it. I hope most people can see Morrison for the used car dealer he is. I think labor should start saying “Don’t you feel like you are watching late night TV marketers when he speaks?” or say “Doesn’t he remind you of Groucho Marx when he said “These are my principles! And I if you don’t like them ….well, I have others”

  11. ….I realise we’re both splitting hairs, here. As someone who’s been involved in a climate change study of this area, I know that what’s happening is exactly what the climate science has been predicting. I’m wondering if the inability of BoM to forecast these storms, however, is due to lack of funding, or whether it’s just that the perameters have changed so much the old models just don’t work (which might mean a bit of both).

    On the other hand, it could be localisation. For example, the extreme storm we had two weeks ago was such a local event it only appears to have impacted on this valley – other areas just got heavy rain.

    This one is wider spread than that, but was not forecast.

  12. Sohar @ #47 Friday, March 22nd, 2019 – 9:49 am

    ” rel=”nofollow”>

    And this was said gleefully at the beginning of this guy’s tenure by the Alt Right. Also by the Left who feared he would do exactly as expected. So it has proven to be the case and I applaud Angela Merkel for her decision. She’s doesn’t need Trump or his divisiveness. And Trump is certainly not doing her any favours.

  14. poroti @ #49 Friday, March 22nd, 2019 – 9:52 am

    FMD, this guy is the Governor.
    .
    .
    Bevin exposed his 9 kids to chickenpox, says vaccine not for everyone

    . Bevin and his wife, Glenna, have nine children, ages 5 to 16, according to his campaign website…………… Gov. Matt Bevin said in a radio interview Tuesday that he deliberately exposed all nine of his children to chickenpox so they would catch the disease and become immune.

    “Every single one of my kids had the chickenpox,” Bevin said in an interview with WKCT, a Bowling Green talk radio station. “They got the chickenpox on purpose..’

    https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/20/matt-bevin-exposed-kids-chickenpox-instead-vaccine/3221848002/

    No big deal. When I was growing up, lots of parents used to do that when one of a number of kids got it. Probably also got vaccine as well.

    Once in our family when 4 or 5 of the 6 kids had chickenpox, my father, who was ever resourceful, lined the infected kids up and went up and down the line spraying calamine lotion from one of those windex-type spray, clear, conical-shaped plastic bottles that you could buy then (yellow head; before Amway time I think).

    A GP of one of my kids once gave his very young children a peanut butter (paste!) sandwich to see if they were anaphylactic in his car sitting outside the Emergency ward of a public hospital.

  17. I don’t want to seem to be harping on this subject. But given recent events we should be celebrating and encouraging diversity and attacking those who would exploit it and divide us. And we should start by having our national institutions truly reflect the community in all of its variety and achievements.

    We should start by taking a look at our Parliament in Canberra. Have a look, for example, at the backgrounds of members of the Morrison government and ask yourself is this a picture of the Australia of today.

    And I don’t want to give the impression that our Commonwealth cousin Canada has all of the answers. But I just looked back at something I wrote in 2015 when Justin Trudeau unveiled his gender and ethnically balanced first cabinet.

    “Canada’s diversity was on full display on Wednesday when the newly-elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled his 30-person cabinet. It wasn’t just that Trudeau chose 15 men, and 15 women. The eclectic background of these people is simply astonishing with many coming to Canada from other places, some as refugees, and rising to national leadership in such a relatively short time.

    As a huge portrait of Queen Elizabeth looked down on the ballroom of Ottawa’s Government House, a parade of personal achievers took the oath of office. Also watching were portraits of two of Canada’s most recent Governors General, both women, and both refugees; Adrienne Clarkson whose Chinese family fled Hong Kong at the start of World War II and Michaelle Jean, a black woman who escaped with her single mother from violence in Haiti. Both were welcomed in Canada and their rise to the highest office in the land attests to the opportunities in this diverse nation.

    Trudeau had a quick answer when asked why he felt the need for the gender balance in his 30-member cabinet.

    “Because it’s 2015,” he said with a smile, with the 15 women cabinet ministers smiling behind him
    in the background .

    But the diversity was not only in gender terms. The new Canadian cabinet includes :

    *four aboriginal Canadians, Indian and Inuit, including a former Indian chief who becomes Minister of Justice

    *four Indo-Canadians, three of them Sikh, one who was a Lieutenant-Colonel and police detective who becomes Minister of Defence..

    *a 30-year-old former refugee from Afghanistan whose father was killed by the Taliban,

    *a former astronaut, Canada’s first man in space. (Canada’s first woman in space, Lise Payette is the current Governor General).

    *a member of a climate change team which won the 2007 Nobel Prize,

    *a quadraplegic, an innocent bystander who overcame a drive-by shooting to become a provincial cabinet minister in Alberta,

    *an Edmonton bus driver who became a city councillor and who served two years in jail in his native India when he was a wrongly accused of terrorism,

    *a doctor who spent years training physicians in underdeveloped Africa,

    *a legally blind legal counsel for both the British Columbia and Canadian Human Rights Commissions who won three medals at the Paralympics.,

    *a former Newfoundland provincial cabinet minister who is a breast cancer survivor,

    *a former oboist in the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra

    * former deputy editor of Canada’s national newspaper the Toronto Globe and Mail

    *a Canadian foreign aid officer

    *a geoscientist who was formerly Manitoba’s Minister of Mines

    * an associate professor of health studies at the University of Toronto

    On a political note, the new names of some federal departments, show where the Trudeau government is going (changes in caps):

    Environment and CLIMATE CHANGE

    Immigration, Citizenship and REFUGEES

    INDIGENOUS and Northern Affairs”

  18. What luck for Victorian voters! The Federal government has had a detailed planning team studying how to deliver a high speed rail line from Geelong to Melbourne. And they seem to have worked out the cost and travel time just in time to allow ScumMo to announce a funding package just before the election!
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-22/fast-rail-train-service-pledge-for-geelong/10927982

    Great news. Amazing luck. Extraordinary in fact, considering the Feds still haven’t agreed to fund the preliminary track work needed at the Melbourne end before this project can start being built.

  19. Thanks for clarifying zoomster.
    I am concerned that the housing standards have not woken up to the coming future, would be better to be prepared.

  20. NYT reporter explains how Trump finally figured out the biggest threat to his presidency — and it’s not Mueller

    The New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman told CNN Thursday what’s behind President Donald Trump’s week of hysterics on Twitter. She said the president has finally realized that he’s in bigger trouble with the Southern District of New York than he is with Robert Mueller, and he’s not happy about it.

    “I do. I think it has gotten through to him that his biggest legal exposure is likely in the Southern District of New York,” Haberman responded. “The Southern District investigations which were spun off from Mueller — this was the Michael Cohen case and its various tentacles since his guilty plea — that’s a greater risk to him and I think the people around him know that and he knows it as well. The documents got in his head.”

    https://www.rawstory.com/2019/03/nyt-reporter-explains-how-trump-finally-figured-out-the-biggest-threat-to-his-presidency-and-its-not-mueller/

  21. ‘Naive’ Kushner destroyed by CNN analyst for using an app ‘you download for free’ to share secret government business

    On Thursday, CNN analyst Susan Hennessey railed against Senior White House aide and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, after it was revealed that he used his personal WhatsApp account to conduct government business.

    “Is there a national security concern if Jared Kushner communicates with foreign leaders over WhatsApp?” CNN host Wolf Blitzer asked.

    “Of course. WhatsApp is not a secure communication channel,” Hennessey said. “The United States government spends millions of dollars every single year, some of the finest mathematicians in the entire world focused on providing secure communications for government officials. Jared Kushner has decided he wants to use an app you can download for free on your phone.”

    “It raises the question about whether or not Jared Kushner might be taken advantage of. We have seen foreign intelligence services reportedly think he is ripe for manipulation. He is naive and inexperienced, has a high level of access and complex business relationships. This is the perfect storm of a grave national security threat,” she said.

    https://www.rawstory.com/2019/03/ripe-for-manipulation-cnns-analyst-explains-how-foreign-governments-take-advantage-of-jared-kushner/

  22. The Trump family has dangerously blurred the lines between foreign lobbying and espionage: Ex-FBI agent

    Former FBI special agent Clint Watts told MSNBC on Thursday that it almost didn’t really matter if sex spa owner Cindy Yang’s interactions with President Donald Trump amounted to espionage or lobbying — the real issue is that everyone, including foreign countries, sees the president and his family as “open for influence.”

    “We’ve even seen reports of foreign countries saying ‘we should go at Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, they are open for influence, let’s try and nudge up to them,’” Watts continued. “Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a spy. It’s a great way to advance your interest for a very low cost, and the doors seem to be wide open on this White House.”

    https://www.rawstory.com/2019/03/the-trump-family-has-dangerously-blurred-the-lines-between-foreign-lobbying-and-espionage-ex-fbi-agent/

  23. Socrates, I thought it was clever campaigning. It was a fantastic promise and announcement, but they wanted Victoria to pay for it.

    I think I’ll use the same tactic and promise a pub with free beer at the end of my street. Of course, I will expect my neighbours to pay for it.

  24. From the sadly lost but valiant BK roundup this morning (many thanks BK), this article attempts to explain why Morrison allowed Aly to interview him for 30 minutes on the subect of Islamaphobia.
    https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2019/03/22/scott-morrison-waleed-aly-why/
    One sentence leapt out for me.

    The Prime Minister is a man deeply wounded by claims that he sought to exploit prejudice towards Australians of Muslim faith and he simply cannot let it go.

    Two days ago, I caught up with a podcast on White Fragility (Phillip Adams, LNL, 2018-08-15).

    Robin DiAngelo is a social justice and anti-racism educator, and she says she specialises in making white people feel uncomfortable. She argues that the overt racism of people like Queensland Senator Fraser Anning, is a smaller part of the problem than we realise. A more pernicious form of racism, she argues, is the lack of consciousness that progressives have about their own white privilege.

    The podcast explains Morrison’s discomfort with the charge of Islamaphobia very well, and not just Morrison’s.
    https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/white-fragility/10122818
    I can’t do her arguments justice in a few sentences, but the problem is not seeing people as groups of individuals who share a different set of problems to yourself. That approach entrenches your privilege. (You have to see race. You can’t deny it.)

  25. Interesting that Roman Quaedvlieg’s book is coming out on May 7th – thus eleven days of publicity before the Federal election. I’m sure Morrison gets a mention or two.

    Newspoll – I think it is unlikely they will be in the field to do federal poll this weekend, so it would seem more likely that we’ll get the next one on Sunday 31st March, the day before everyone comes back to Parliament (and Barnaby and mates attempt a putsch against ‘Mick Mac’)

  26. A couple of observations, resulting from NSW but with Federal implications.

    Firstly, the splinter of the ALP/Greens I would view as mature, the Greens entrenched at 10% (give or take) and with 80% returning to Labor by preferences.

    The splinter of LNP/One Nation is also mature, having been a feature (particularly in Northern Queensland) since Hanson

    The splinter of Shooters/National is not mature with the impact yet to be determined but where the NSW election will advise.

    Then there is the preference return to the LNP from One Nation and Shooters, because it is from the LNP that One Nation and Shooters attract their vote (it is not Labor held seats One Nation and Shooters have a presence in)

    The “noise” on preferences is what it is – just “noise” because the demographics, to me, are as described.

    The LNP want the One Nation and Shooters votes to return to the LNP.

    In terms of the Greens, those I associate with (and who operate in the relative space) say that the Greens ultimatum on renewable transition, over 10 years at a per annum figure as put in NSW, is achievable and beneficial (unlike much of what the Greens propose otherwise)

    BUT, where the shortfall is is with the logistics of delivery to the consumer market.

    This is because the current distribution network is from the point of production being a coal mine whereas the distribution network from a renewable source will be from a different location from where the coal availability is.

    Therefore the “signal” from the Federal Government is critical, and absent with the current Federal Government (and will remain so hence its lack of support as confirmed by consistent polling data)

    Labor for its part refers to the transition renewable energy target(s), not addressing the distribution infrastructure as yet (but the election has not been called so the powder may be being kept dry – and that is the assessment).

    We will continue to rely on the poles and wires distribution to market (consumers) BUT those poles and wires need to be invested in because the existing poles and wires, absent coal, are redundant.

    This investment in the alternate poles and wires network is hamstrung (and negated) by the ideology of the current Federal Government, deterring Investors (altho there is a level of investment occurring in anticipation of the change of government at the Federal level).

  27. News.com.au survey for what its worth

    Results
    Who do you want as premier of New South Wales?

    Liberal’s Gladys Berejiklian

    46%

    Labor’s Michael Daley

    53%

    20970 Voters

  28. A fast train to Geelong will not save much time or buy many votes (it only takes 50-60 minutes now, and the delays caused by are suburban trains getting in the way – a fast train might save 5-10 minutes and people are going to want it to stop at Werribee which will slow it down). Why they are bothering in Vic is beyond me – they are going to get wiped out here. A fast train to places such as shepparton, Warrnambool, Wodonga, Bairnsdale, Winchelsea/colac, Ararat, etc. with a few stops on the way would make more sense, will help decentralisation – and might save some seats from indies. My guess is he wants to look as though he is investing in vic infrastructure and has picked the cheapest project he can.

  30. So the woman whose federal seat they are in is on the far left of the group and out of camera shot for the most part. Not so the blokes.

  39. Lol – the RW trolls usually stack online polls and they usually skew to the right. Also, only old people read news.com.

    So taking that into account, noting it means fuck all, is worse for Gladys.

  40. Ardern getting high praise indeed. This Opinion Piece is from the New York Times ‘Editorial Board’ .

    ByThe Editorial Board
    The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.

    Open link in incognito to read.Outline does not seem to work now but Incognito is working better!

    America Deserves a Leader as Good as Jacinda Ardern
    When Government Works for the Governed

    ……………………the world should learn from the way Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s prime minister, has responded to the horror.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/opinion/new-zealand-ardern.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

  41. Can the EU turn around and say “I know you only asked for an extension until June, but we’re happy to grant you an indefinite extension on Brexit; now you can go home, calm down, and pretend like this entire bit of ugliness never happened”? I hope so, because that would be fun to watch.

  42. “And just to add, the Liberals are not just “stuffed” in Victoria, they are “royally stuffed””

    Nah….”Comprehensivley Fwarked” better decriptor. 🙂

  44. “Can the EU turn around and say “I know you only asked for an extension until June, but we’re happy to grant you an indefinite extension on Brexit; now you can go home, calm down, and pretend like this entire bit of ugliness never happened”? I hope so, because that would be fun to watch.”

    Dont think so. as i see it they are well into the territory of the ongoing uncertainty doing as much damage as a no-deal Brexit and the EU dont want to wear that.

  45. a r @ #88 Friday, March 22nd, 2019 – 10:13 am

    Can the EU turn around and say “I know you only asked for an extension until June, but we’re happy to grant you an indefinite extension on Brexit; now you can go home, calm down, and pretend like this entire bit of ugliness never happened”? I hope so, because that would be fun to watch.

    They won’t do that for practical reasons. The dates for EU elections are controlling this now. About all that is left to avoid a hard Brexit is if the UK revokes article 50.

  47. I reckon Morrison has set himself up for a disaster. If anyone comes forward to contradict his claims about the exploitation of anti-Muslim sentiment, he will be completely discredited. There are 8 weeks in which this can happen. His Liberal enemies will be weighing things up.

  48. news on line surveys often skew heavily to the right on law and order and immigration, so 20,000+ voters give PP as 53% to Daley may mean something. It could be bias from sexist old white bloke voters I suspect – but doesn’t mean they won’t vote liberal anyhow.

  50. The bigger the electoral loss Morrison suffers, the more Mal can crow that he woulda won because ” internal polling ” . The ego just won’t let a golden chance like that slip by.

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