A few pieces of state news before we move on to the hard stuff. The finalisation of Western Australia’s state redistribution is covered in the post above, and a new state poll from Tasmania gets the once-over in a the post below. In Victoria, the results from the Mulgrave state by-election were finalised earlier this week, and they defied Liberal claims on the night that they had improved on their state election performance to the extent of finishing second. In fact, independent Ian Cook amassed 9,122 votes (25.3%) at the second-last exclusion to take the silver ahead of Liberal candidate Courtney Mann on 8,964 (24.9%), the final score being 20,363 (56.5%) for Labor’s Eden Foster and 15,681 for Cook (43.5%), a swing to Cook of 4.3%.
On with the show:
• Sunday’s preselection to fill the New South Wales Liberal Senate vacancy created by Marise Payne’s retirement delivered an upset win for Dave Sharma, who held Wentworth from 2019 until his defeat in 2022 at the hands of teal independent Allegra Spender. Sharma won the party ballot at the final count with 295 votes against 206 for the widely touted favourite, former state government minister and federal Gilmore candidate Andrew Constance. The favoured candidate of Peter Dutton, arch-conservative former ACT Senator Zed Seselja, dropped out at the second last round with 155 votes to Sharma’s 177 and Constance’s 169, at which point his supporters seemingly fell in heavily behind Sharma. Earlier exclusions with non-trivial vote shares were, in reverse order, Jess Collins, James Brown, Monica Tudehope and Pallavai Sinha.
• Sue Bailey of The Mercury reports Clarence mayor Brendan Blomeley has failed in his conservative-backed to topple moderate incumbent Richard Colbeck from the business end of the Tasmanian Liberal Senate ticket, on which Colbeck will have second position behind conservative incumbent Claire Chandler, reversing the order from 2019. The third position, which has not availed the Liberals since 2004, goes to Jacki Martin, an electorate officer to Senator Wendy Askew.
• A Victorian Liberal preselection ballot on Sunday chose Kyle Hoppitt, former Baptist preacher and director of JAK Audio Visual, as third candidate on the party’s Senate ticket. The result was a snub to Greg Mirabella, who stood aside as the party’s state president to run. Mirabella served in the Senate from November 2021 until mid-2022, having failed to win re-election from the number three position at the May 2022 election. The Age reports Hoppitt prevailed with 187 votes to 173 for Mirabella, who lost conservative support as state president for acquiescing in the expulsion of factional powerbroker Ivan Stratov by the party’s administrative committee. Neither federal Liberal leader Peter Dutton, who backed Mirabella, nor state Liberal leader John Pesutto, who favoured Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Karyn Sobels, succeeded in getting their preferred candidate up.
• Pat Dodson, Labor Senator for Western Australia, has announced he will retire from the Senate on January 26 due to health issues. The West Australian reports Varun Ghosh, Right-aligned barrister for Francis Burt Chambers and the son of first-generation Indian immigrants, is the front-runner for the vacancy.
• Noel Towell of The Age reports the Liberals have preselected candidates for Higgins and Chisholm, the two Melbourne seats the party lost to Labor at the 2022 election. Katie Allen will again contest Higgins after winning a ballot ahead of Port Phillip mayor Marcus Pearl. Allen she served from 2019 until her defeat at the hands of Michelle Ananda-Rajah, who became the seat’s first ever Labor member. The candidate for Chisholm will be Monash councillor Theo Zographos, who was preselected unopposed.
• Roy Morgan has an online poll of 1006 respondents exploring the half-formed opinions of Australians concerning the Middle East crisis.
• The Australian Electoral Commission scored the strongest ratings of any government agency in an annual public survey conducted by the Australian Public Service Commission, with 87% saying they trusted it (either strongly, somewhat or somewhere in between) and 91% professing satisfaction with it.
Thanks for the roundup BK. Yes I do have a view on Westconnex. I have expressed negative opinions on that project here for a long time. This may be long but you did ask…
“ Matt O’Sullivan writes that motorists are enduring hour-long trips over a stretch of Victoria Road through inner-city Sydney suburbs during the morning peak amid warnings there is no simple fix to gridlock caused by the opening of the Rozelle interchange. With ten lanes merging into four when previously it was a seven-lane feed, who would have thought? (Any comment, Socrates?)
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/it-s-a-forever-problem-experts-say-rozelle-hell-is-here-to-stay-20231130-p5eo2o.html
This suggests a basic error in engineering design (and traffic modelling). Concepts of lane balance in motorway design have existed since the 1960s.
The problems run deeper than that though. The obvious question is: how does an experienced transport authority that has built multiple motorways in the past get it so badly wrong?
There are multiple reasons. Simple ones first: most major public sector agencies in charge of engineering systems have lost their internal engineering skill base. This applies to lots of agencies that make complex stuff. Think defence with subs and frigates. Think energy with Snowy Hydro. There are not enough technical indians.
Problem two is leadership. Most major public sector agencies in charge of engineering systems are run by people with legal or financial backgrounds, not engineering. If they are run by engineers they usually have a career in construction, not network analysis or management. So there are not enough technical indians, and the chiefs do not know enough to spot bad analysis.
Problem three is systemic: our infrastructure planning system is broken. When I first started work in the 1980s every State had planning groups that would analyse city transport networks, measure travel demands, estimate future population and needs, and identify what projects were needed. What was built was a rational product of what was needed. That process was biased towards building roads instead of demand management and public transport. But it did work.
Now the largest engineering projects, including WestConnex, Inland Rail (and in other fields like Snowy II and AUKUS Subs) are originating in a political environment outside long term planning. The plans are rewritten to justify them, but they are political thought bubbles, not part of a long term program based on technical analysis. When we do produce “plans” there are no schedules of delivery dates or detailed costs, as they only embarrass ministers if they aren’t met.
Problem Four is incentives. For tolled urban road projects, the main driver is revenue. The people who build these jobs are not interested in whether the transport network works. They want to build their tunnel. They want to make sure there will be enough revenue to do that. So tolling a bottleneck like Rozelle is perfect.
Problem five is political. At the level of Transport Ministers, there is no understanding or interest in what makes a transport system work. Ministers want to see activity happen, so they can say they are “busting congestion” (even though that is an impossible task). There is no long term plan with bipartisan support, just a series of short term announcements to make sure donors and major unions have work, and there is something to announce before the next election.
Rozelle is a bad example. But it is one of many.
Speaking of disfunctional systems needing reform: transport is not the only one.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-01/statistics-reveal-australian-military-top-heavy/103173718
The Defence Strategic Review avoided the hard issues of organisational restructuring and leadership.
If you ignore the patrol boats, we have more admirals than warships. (18 Admirals, 13 warships).
Socrates, I did expect an expansive reply from you and I agree with all five points.
BK
Thanks. I’m sure you must have seen similar trends in manufacturing.
Thanks. I’m sure you must have seen similar trends in manufacturing.
_____________
Socrates
To this day, I still bear the scars of combat with third-rate cost accountants who wielded considerable managerial clout.
Exposing their blinkered stupidity was a delight at times.
Scottsays:
Friday, December 1, 2023 at 8:03 am
Why is that Taylormade?
Clare O’Neil is doing her job.
_____________________
About bloody time.
Where was she 3 weeks ago.
Walmart shifts to India from China for cheaper imports
The retailer is importing goods from toys and electronics to bicycles, pharmaceuticals, packaged food, dry grains and pasta from India to the U.S.
https://www-nbcnews-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna127195?amp_gsa=1&_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQGsAEggAID#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=17013808735022&csi=1&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcnews.com%2Fbusiness%2Fbusiness-news%2Fwalmart-shifts-india-china-cheaper-imports-rcna127195
“By Reuters
Walmart is importing more goods to the United States from India and reducing its reliance upon China as it looks to cut costs and diversify its supply chain, data seen by Reuters shows.
The world’s largest retailer shipped one quarter of its U.S. imports from India between January and August this year, according to bill of lading figures shared with Reuters by data firm Import Yeti. That compared with just 2% in 2018.
Only 60% of its shipments came from China during the same period, down from 80% in 2018, the same data shows. To be sure, China is still Walmart’s biggest country for importing goods.
The shift illustrates how the rising cost of importing from China and escalating political tensions between Washington and Beijing are encouraging large U.S. companies to import more from countries including India, Thailand and Vietnam.
“We want the best prices,” Andrea Albright, Walmart’s executive vice president of sourcing said in an interview. “That means I need resiliency in our supply chains. I can’t be reliant on any one supplier or geography for my product because we’re constantly managing things from hurricanes and earthquakes to shortages in raw materials.”
[sprocket_says:
Friday, December 1, 2023 at 7:38 am
And the pearl clutching at the Daily Dutton shows a lack of self-awareness at the organ renowned for unhinged personal attacks of prominent progressive women.
A new low, even for this amateur crowd
This week’s unhinged personal attack on Peter Dutton left even Labor strategists to regard it as amateurish and laden with risk.
By SIMON BENSON]
Those ‘Labor strategists’ are clearly the problem then. No wonder Labor has crashed to 31%.
You don’t let low rent bullies like Dutton dominate you.
Socrates @ #51 Friday, December 1st, 2023 – 9:03 am
Only if you think the criteria for success is reducing travel time or increasing traffic throughput. But of course that is never the criteria for Sydney transport. It is maximizing construction costs and toll revenue. So, in fact, this project is an outstanding success.
The YoY growth in India’s GDP underwent a mild sequential easing to 7.6% in Q2 FY2024 from 7.8% in Q1 FY2024, considerably surpassing our (7.0%) and the consensus estimate for the quarter.
https://m-economictimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/m.economictimes.com/news/economy/indicators/indias-gdp-grows-7-6-per-cent-in-q2-fy24/amp_articleshow/105594183.cms?amp_gsa=1&_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQIUAKwASCAAgM%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=17013831607934&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com
Taylormade says:
Friday, December 1, 2023 at 9:17 am
About bloody time.
Where was she 3 weeks ago.
———————–
If the former lib/nats ministers did their job in a competent matter , this mess wouldn’t have occurred
@ Socrates, responding to Mr Fucked Up Neidermeyer:
“ Morning all. I don’t normally bother to respond to FUBAR’s obvious lies, but this is a whopper:
“ FUBAR says:
Thursday, November 30, 2023 at 11:23 pm
The only reason a nuclear power station takes longer than a decade to plan and build is a lack of political will. They built them quicker than a decade in the UAE.”
Nuclear power plant construction is complex. The build alone takes at least seven years. Add time for planning and design and you need a decade.
The start of the modern spurt of nuclear power plant construction was the Gen III reactor in Finland. There was no lack of political will – Finland has minimal coal and gas to speak of, and negligible solar for four months a year. It took over 15 years!”
_________
15 years wouldn’t even touch the sides of what would be required to have just one operational nuclear power plant in Australia.
Ziggy did a report for Howard back in 2007 and concluded that it would take 20 years & most of that time would be spent creating a regulatory framework and significantly expanding an ‘ANSTO sized’ workforce into a full blown nuclear industry.
That aspect of Nuclear submarines is actually easier, but still a significant challenge – so the 10-15 year timeframes before e receive the first AUKUS boat (or in a parallel universe received barracuda nuclear submarines) is ‘doable’, but still represent some difficult gateways to achieve.
Cost and politics will always mean that onshore nuclear power generation is a non starter for Australia. The argument is actually nothing more than a right wing cultcha war totem, and a smokescreen for the continuation of fossil fuels as a default setting. Which is where FUBAR cakes into it.
Player One
If you note my point four on incentives, we agree on the nature of Sydney tollroads.
The sad bit for Sydney is that apart from the relative transport failure of Rozelle and WestConnex, for the same money Sydney could have built another two NW Metros, which would have reduced transport costs for hundreds of thousands.
Now Adelaide is headed down the same rabbit hole with North South Corridor, being sold the same snake oil by the same consultants. It will be a financial albatross for South Australia.
What I don’t get is why rabid supporters of the Right like FUBAR, and many like him, are okay with Nuclear Power Stations, but lose their shit over Offshore Wind Power generators!?!
Ven @ #57 Friday, December 1st, 2023 – 9:19 am
Always watch where the smart money goes.
Just taking a personal moment to think of the people of Balmain and Birchgrove. Should be over soon.
Steve777 @ #22 Friday, December 1st, 2023 – 7:56 am
There a no viable alternative routes. All of the possible ones are already major bottlenecks. Getting from North to South across the Western Distributor (from Lilyfield to Annandale or Leichhardt has been a problem ever since the Western Distributor was created.
UK Cartoons:
I checked out this list to see if the Jan, 6 attempted coup had
been added:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_and_coup_attempts
Nuclear power is big, dirty and dangerous, its byproducts can be made into weapons and it can provide subsidised billions for mates, so no wonder right-wingers love it.
Itza
Quite a good statement by the STC, I reckon. But it doesn’t appear to have staunched the flow of blood.
More pain to go through yet. Workers in any field would always do better to pursue their political goals away from their workplace: except, of course, union-sanctioned activities (but I believe these were personal actions).
All a bit naive I would say. Must put Hugo Weaving in a difficult position.
Socrates @ #63 Friday, December 1st, 2023 – 9:38 am
Missed that! Yes, we agree.
Still, perhaps there is an upside – this project has finally made Sydney so bad that the best solution may be to abandon the concept of commuting altogether.
this is the james Masola whowas ashoring us that morrison had a plan and despite the poles he could win so it is ocay for dutton to eweaponise child abuse attacking labor but clair oniel cant use his tacdicks liberal senater Dean smith should be sacked he lobeyid for a convicted offender to be released
As for the Dutton “apology” thingy, the coalition & their supporting media, which is most of it, have found a line from Labor they can put up in isolation & attack to their hearts content.
A bit like “Mediscare”. The MSM had this name coined within a day or so. Whereas they were quite happy to go along with the “Carbon Tax” lie for years, using it themselves.
Labor has apparently “crossed a line”. A line its opponents get to draw.
We were never going to have nuclear submarines until we were.
Nuclear power is our moon mission and JFK’s words are completely appropriate-“ We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.”
Watching the Lehrmann Vs Channel Ten case – Why do the Law and Order cases never take this long?
I’ve always assumed Nuclear is going to involve IP and expertise, such that like oil and gas, there is a constant stream of money from Australia to the multi-national IP holders, so that like the oil economy there is a constant flow of money out of our pockets into the bank vaults of the world’s richest people through the major stock exchanges dominated by them.
It might already be an issue where while we were being idiots wind and solar IP has also been locked up, but in theory there was, or is, a chance for renewables to be a largely self contained domestic venture such that we didn’t need to funnel billions of dollars to other countries.
Nuclear seems to me to be a goodish fall back for those who like to take $60 from every tank of petrol we buy.
FUBAR @ Friday, December 1, 2023 at 10:34 am:
“We were never going to have nuclear submarines until we were.”
===============
When are we getting those again?
#ProvingOurPointThankyou
😆
Looks like Western Australia has been targeted by some serious gangsters:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-01/elliott-management-wa-bluewaters-energy-stoush/103063852
Dutton is lying about nuclear power plants.
It is as simple as that.
Dutton’s Darlings amplify and spread Dutton’s nuclear lie.
It is as simple as that.
Player One @ #72 Friday, December 1st, 2023 – 10:07 am
I was hoping your last sentence ended in “…so bad that the best solution may be to abandon Sydney all together”
I was hopeful that this might look like the last scene in Mad Max 3
It is amusing to see that the Murdoch, Fox, Sky, Stokes and Costello MSM elements are finally exercised about a possible political lie: Dutton’s actual or possible role in expediting the presence of pedophiles (the irony!) in Australia.
Was it only a couple of months ago that Dutton was calling for a Royal Commission into pedophilia in Indigenous communities? Thus once again wallowing in his favorite psychosexual political playing field. The chap is a weirdo with his personal fixation on kooky sex.
Perhaps it is time for a royal commission into Dutton’s time in the Queensland Police Force. Whatever one might want to say about individual policepersons in that force, it clearly has some deep-rooted institutional racism.
Our PB engineering colleagues regularly highlight problems with high cost projects. I always wonder if these issues are unique to Australia or if it is an international problem. I don’t have a solution beyond the obvious one that idiots are in charge.
My experience is at the operational level where it is no different. Years ago people with engineering backgrounds were in charge. It took a while to get things done but everything worked. We went through a few different phases until finally the clowns whose focus was shareholder value got hold of the reins. Chaos ensued.
One classic example of far too many. Confined space renewal in Alice Springs. I booked an airfare 3 months in advance for the grand sum of $360. (It was about 12 years ago) How dare you, we maintain shareholder value with video conferencing. You can’t do hands-on training via a video camera. Well those on high have decreed that those at the lower end of the food chain can drive and no one has the guts to tell them they are idiots.
So drive I did. The Great Central Road was closed due to rain so I went the long way. Eight days of driving for 2 days of training including two 14 hour Sundays on double time. 4WD vehicle running costs over $2 per Km. I didn’t mind, extra dollars off the mortgage and I got paid to tour the back blocks of South Australia.
Mostly Interested @ #81 Friday, December 1st, 2023 – 10:51 am
We did that already 🙂
Whenever we go back (which we don’t do very often) we see that it has gotten massively worse each time. But those who live there never seem to notice. I believe it is known as Boiling Frog syndrome, but we just call it Sydney Syndrome.
Macarthur
Just because it’s going to take a long time doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing. The F111 took a long time to become operational in the face of harsh criticism. Once operational it was a magnificent piece of kit. We haven’t been able to fully replace the capability since its demise, unfortunately.
Granny Anny
One of my rellies is a project manager for very large projects in the multi-billions range. The risk management reality is that the larger and more complex a project the more likely the project is to go pear shaped. If there is a trend it may be that globally there are more and more large projects and therefore more and more large projects going pear shaped coming to our attention.
Re Sydney’s transport hassles, Sydney is built in the wrong place, of course. The Harbour and surrounds are beautiful, but it’s a network of inlets, waterways and peninsulas, with hilly, deeply eroded country to the North of the Harbour. Also, access to the inland of the State is difficult. Not the best place for a metropolis.
In fact, it has been said that Sydney is ideally sited for its original purpose – an open air prison.
Parramatta would have been a much better site for Australia’s and NSW’s biggest city – better access in all directions. The settlement at Sydney Cove could have developed into a port city, like Fremantle.
Or if Arthur Philip had sailed further North and planted the flag near the site of present day Newcastle. Access to the whole Hunter Valley, easy access to the inland and lots of the black stuff once the industrial revolution kicked off.
I see that FUBAR still promoting Dutton’s nuclear lie. Dedicated spear carriers abound, not realizing that they will be sacrificed ruthlessly when their time comes.
S777
Most coastal megalopoli will have substantial additional transport challenges with an additional meter of sea level. Let alone 7 meters of sea level rise.
Miami is out of the blocks quickly with $400 million being spent on raising the road bed of the main drag and installing lots of pumping capacity. It turns out that Miami is sitting on highly porous bed rock and sea level rise translates instantly to the city’s water table.
Veteran Bludgers will note the irony of a major CO2 emitting tourism destination being hoist on its own petard.
Granny Anny,
High cost projects are difficult. As with everything you have Project management Cost Triangle:
Good, fast, cheap.
Choose two…
You only have to look at the big news item of this week out of India – where 41 road workers were trapped for 17 days in a road tunnel to realise that the big project problems aren’t unique to Australia.
The major problems with good engineering projects tend to come when the bean counters stick their noses in…
Remember some years ago on the Firth of Clyde, the Hunterston Nuclear power station was built and according to the cheer squad in favour of this source of power, all the problems of providing power to Glasgow and some of the highlands would be solved.
Latest on Hunterston is that it has been decommissioned and dismantled.
So much for the line that nuclear is for ever………
Let’s face it, the whole nuclear line from Dutton and his crew is the fig used to cover up their total inability to find a workable policy to deal with the push to find clean, reliable and sustainable forms of energy.
I don’t know about him being a liar but who in their right mind would trust this man?
Player One
“Still, perhaps there is an upside – this project has finally made Sydney so bad that the best solution may be to abandon the concept of commuting altogether.”
You would hope so, but that is where Australian cities have a problem – lack of alternatives. In Sydney you either pay a lot of tolls and drive for a long time, or not pay tolls and drive for even longer. For most people walking and cycling are not realistic for longer commutes. That leaves public transport, which varies from fairly good in some corridors to poor west of Parramatta to negligible in outer western suburbs. Most people drive because they have no affordable alternative within the time constraints they live their lives under.
Socrates
That’s the Australian dream at play.
Player One @ #84 Friday, December 1st, 2023 – 11:02 am
Interesting to hear that was your experience. After our move back to Hobart after living in Brisbane for 16 years we had a whole lot of angst about our decision. A year after our move, about 3 months ago, we went back to Brisbane for a week and, with the benefit of that year away, experienced how bad the city had become. Absolutely a boiling frog scenario.
Don’t forget, peeps – Fossil Fuels are not the problem, nor are morons who think they can “amortize” their emissions by burning more of them.
No, it is tourism that is the real planet killer! 🙂
Boerwar is correct on risk management in megaprojects. Taxpayers (and motorists) are usually better off with multiple small projects than one large, but most decision makers love to cut the ribbon on one large project.
Alpha Zero
I am familiar with the PM doctrine, “time, quality, cost, … choose any two”. However one of the findings on research into very large projects is that it ceases to hold. The odds of failure go up in percentage terms as cost goes up. PPPs are a particular problem, loaded with bias.
In one study the average forecasting error in Australian transport projects was +/-15%. For PPP toll roads it was -44%. That is the forecasting errors were three times larger and consistently in one direction, rather than random.
Just because it’s going to take a long time doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing. The F111 took a long time to become operational in the face of harsh criticism. Once operational it was a magnificent piece of kit. We haven’t been able to fully replace the capability since its demise, unfortunately.
________
A few weeks ago I took my grandson to the Port Adelaide Aviation Museum. It’s quite good.
In it is an F111. What a magnificent, bigger than expected, beast it is!
As a kid the dad of one family was an F111 pilot. Deadset arsehole. Ended up divorced. Good job for their mum. Wouldn’t be surprised if he was violent.
Wouldn’t be surprised if that early experience contributed to my attitudes towards the military.
Global tourism generates 8% of the world’s emissions. And growing.
Tourism’s 8% will be lurking in the skies for a long, long time to come.
All governments love tourism.
Globally, tourism is an expression of the wealthy indulging themselves. Tourism is the acme of individual consumerism.
Globally, tourism is a massive biodiversity killer.
Put the homeless in tourism dwellings and there would be zero homelessness world wide.
Naturally tourism CO2 emissions drug dealers form an enormously powerful lobby.
So no government in the world is prepared to say that they are shutting down tourism in the interest of wealth equity, biodiversity, homelessness and the climate.
Re Tricot @11:29.
”Let’s face it, the whole nuclear line from Dutton and his crew is the fig used to cover up their total inability to find a workable policy to deal with the push to find clean, reliable and sustainable forms of energy.”
I believe that Dutton and his crew have no intention to “deal with the push” towards clean energy other than to defeat it so that we remain dependent on fossil fuels. It’s not an inability to move towards clean energy, they have no intention of doing so and, should they attain power soon, they will reverse what little progress has been made.
Peter Dutton and most of his crew either don’t believe in global heating, like their old masters Howard and Abbott, or at least don’t believe that we can or should do anything to address it. Whether Dutton actually believes that developing nuclear energy in Australia is a remotely sensible idea I don’t know. But he is a well know liar. I don’t believe anything he says unless it’s corroborated by a credible source.