Climate Change & Sustainability, Politics & Government

Election 2019 follies 5: sundry stuff

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1. Update

From Buzzfeed:

    – Tony Abbott has said in a newspaper interview that Labor has a much better climate change policy than the Coalition

    – The Liberal party is releasing its costings tomorrow, two days before the election

    – Supporters of Liberal senator Jim Molan are causing waves within the Coalition as he tries to overcome his unfavourable position on the party ticket

    – Bob Hawke has written a letter praising Bill Shorten’s leadership and saying he is ready to be prime minister

    – The Clive Palmer advertising blitz continues as the ad blackout looms

    – Around three million people have already voted. (Emphasis added)

Abbott is, of course, desperate, and is after all still a weather vane on climate change (self-described in 2009). From my earlier post, Tony Abbott finds his true voice on climate:

2. Possible outcome

Bludger Track has Labor on 79, the LNP on 66 and 6 other.

Kevin Bonham is thereabouts.

My son Mark reckons Labor will push into the low 80s. He thinks:

    Seats Labor could win – Bonner, Dickson, Forde, Flynn, Leichhardt, Petrie.

    Some would add Brisbane.

    Herbert is anyone’s guess.

    I think Wentworth looks the only obvious gain outside Qld and possibly Braddon in Tas?

    Possibly Indi.

He thinks Labor will gain a couple in NSW in net terms, plus a couple possible in Victoria.

He reckons he has an excellent record in the past, and forecast Trump’s victory, and, I think, Brexit. To me, that means he’s due to bomb out. I think he has a point, though, when he says the MSM, mainly NewsCorp, are running selective single seat polls, which in themselves have proven inaccurate in the past, to change the narrative to make the race look closer than it is at any given time.

Bludger reckons plus 5 for Labor in Qld, plus 4 in Victoria, and even in NSW.

3. Pat Dodson says Labor’s Indigenous policies will be a ‘watershed for the nation’

Dodson says Labor will ‘reset the relationship’ between Aboriginal people and the government:

    Labor has released its “Fair go for First Nations” policy, which includes creating regional assemblies for First Nations involvement in decision-making about everything from service delivery to negotiating treaties. It is the result of three years of work led by the First Nations Labor caucus: Dodson, Northern Territory senator Malarndirri McCarthy and New South Wales MP Linda Burney.

    …

    There’s a lot on the Labor agenda: a voice to parliament, a Makarrata commission and a referendum on constitutional change; an end to punitive welfare and the contentious Indigenous advancement strategy; more funds for housing, health, culture and education. Labor intends to “reset the relationship” between Aboriginal people and the government, which Dodson says has been bad since the Northern Territory intervention began in 2007.

    …

    Labor says it will establish transitional regional assemblies so communities can determine their own solutions for important policy issues.

Through the regional assemblies the real people affected will become involved in designing programs for change.

    Labor has also committed to creating a national resting place in Canberra, a place to commemorate Australia’s shared frontier past.

    “It will be similar to the war memorial, but for the unknown warriors, for the people who we don’t know where they’re from, or whose remains are being held in a museum somewhere.

    “We want to give some dignity to those people.

4. Fiji PM Frank Bainimarama slaps down Liberal MP John Alexander’s climate advice

Then we had Samoa’s prime minister urging Australia to reduce its carbon emissions, calling any world leaders who doesn’t believe in climate change “utterly stupid”:

    Samoan prime minister Tuilaepa Sailele has attacked climate change deniers as “utterly stupid”, urging Australia to cut its carbon emissions.

    Mr Sailele, speaking during a visit to the Lowy Institute, a foreign policy think-tank in Sydney, said climate change was a “disaster” threatening Pacific Island nations.

Then he called on Australian voters to make what he’s called ‘the right decision on climate change’ at this weekend’s election.

I heard one of them this morning, possibly him, warn that if the Pacific countries go under, so will the major coastal cities of the world.

5. Angry Nationals play payback in NSW Senate row

    Nationals federal president Larry Anthony has added his weight to a call by the NSW party for supporters to vote “below the line” in the Senate, in retaliation against the campaign by maverick Liberal senator Jim Molan to get voters to buck the Coalition’s joint ticket.

    Molan, a rightwinger who was relegated to an unwinnable fourth place on the ticket, is canvassing for votes to go to him personally rather than to the ticket.

    He has no prospect of being elected but the votes he takes from above the line harm the Nationals’ chances of getting their candidate Perin Davey elected.

    Votes “above the line” are for a party or group; “below the line” is where candidates are listed individually.

    A furious NSW Nationals organisation accused Molan’s backers of breaking the Coalition agreement for the joint ticket and asked its party members to tell people to vote below the line to maximise Davey’s prospects.

    Davey has third place on the joint ticket, behind the two Liberal candidates, making her chances already very precarious.

The coalition agreement is broken.

11 thoughts on “Election 2019 follies 5: sundry stuff”

  1. Brian: Molan seems to be doing his duty to the country by helping to make it even less likely that the a National party that normally gets only 4% of the vote in polls will continue to be influential. It also looks as though he will help get rid of Abbott.

  2. This outbreak of Coalition brawling will have long term implications – few things are more bitter than intra party fighting – memories are long & grievances are nurtured unto the second & third generation

  3. Memories are long in the Labor Party too. Just now the sniff of victory seems to be pushing aside the memories…. these feuds can be bitter indeed, in any Party.

    Are they worse in Opposition?
    If so, the Liberals and the Nationals and the Coalition may simply be making an early start on the big tasks of hatchetting which lie ahead.

    🙁

  4. Let them tear each other apart.
    They are no better folk than you or I if we were to seek and obtain power over other folk.

  7. Barrie Cassidy (Hawkes media advisor had some good things to say about Bob Hawke. For example:

    He should also be remembered for this. When he came to office in 1983, Australia had a school retention rate of just 30 per cent, one of the lowest in the developed world. When he left office eight years later that retention rate was 70 per cent.

    He also said Bob was someone who did things because he thought they were right even if unpopular. For example:

    What did I most admire about Bob Hawke? He abhorred racism. And bigotry. Hated both.

    And whenever he got a whiff of it he would call it out, no matter the consequences and no matter what the focus groups would think.

    How Hawke changed Australia

    As prime minister for almost nine years, Bob Hawke brought in major economic and environmental reforms that endure to this day.
    That above anything else had a profound impact on me during my four years as his senior press secretary.

    He first displayed his credentials when as ACTU boss he organised the demonstrations against the visiting Springboks in support of action against apartheid.

    That was not popular, but he did it anyway and day and night used the media to make his case.

    Then once prime minister — at CHOGM meetings in The Bahamas in 1985 and Vancouver in 1987 — he enlisted international banker Jim Wolfensohn to organise financial sanctions against South Africa.
    It was all done in secret. Just a few staff and public servants knew what he was up to. The media was kept in the dark for fear it would come to nothing.
    But it worked. And years later the South African foreign minister described the campaign as the “dagger that finally killed apartheid”.

  8. And a quote from bob Hawke’ father:

    Mr Hawke described his bond with his father as “remarkable”.

    “He was a most humble man, the most decent man I’ve ever met in my life, and he always looked for the best in people to find positives,” he said of his father, a congressional minister.
    “And he said something to me that always remained with me. He said if you believe in the fatherhood of God you must necessarily believe in the brotherhood of man, it follows necessarily. And even though I left the church and was not religious, that truth remained with me.”

    Explains some of the good things about bob.

  9. Separate on Bob Hawke post now up.

    Last night we had some urgent emergent family matters.

    I had a chat with Mark. He says optimism is evaporating around Qld, lucky if Labor will hold even. He still thinks Labor will fall over the line, but it depends on pre-poll and and youth vote – and on the Victorians being sensible.

    Ipsos poll demographics today show the weak spot to be middle-aged males.

    The economy is looking increasingly wobbly, and many are just not prepared to risk change . The ‘kill Bill’ scare seems to be having an effect.

    My younger bro Len says he had a conversation with a young Kiwi woman. She was actually National, their equivalent of Liberal.

    She says they have ‘truth’ laws in political campaigning in NZ. Most of the shite being used to attack Bill and Labor here would simply be illegal.

    We need to become a grown up country.

    BTW you may have noticed that when ScoMo yesterday was saying how good we had things here, he was comparing us to developing countries.

  10. Exquisite timing, Bob.

    Your not wrong MrA.
    He’s stopped the Coalitions late poll surge dead in its tracks. Right on the political advertising ban.
    Gotta be worth a 2 point sympathy swing for ALP.

    I can imagine Bill doing a fist pumping happy dance when he got the news.

    As for Bob Hawke, he was an Australian blokey larrikin, a commodity that’s fast becoming a threatened species by the PC far left.

    I’ll dedicate a schooner to him as the sun sets.

  11. Bob sent a message to the Labor launch. Bill read it out. Then Bill said, “Bob, we’re doing this (winning) for you.”

    They love their old warhorses in the ALP.

    Vale Robert James Lee Hawke.

    (Heard a few seconds of one of Bob’s daughters saying how good it was that Blanche was with him at the last.

    Faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love.)

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