It’s not a stunt, Senator Stephen Conroy has resigned from parliament, effective from 30 September.
Senior Labor figure and so-called factional warlord, Conroy resigned from parliament by tabling a speech in the senate late on Thursday night. Bill Shorten is oversees and apparently knew, but no-one bothered to tell acting leader Tanya Plibersek. Continue reading Saturday salon 17/9
There’s a new book called The Turnbull Gamble, co-authored by political commentator, journalist and academic Peter van Onselen and politics professor Wayne Errington, who ask whether it was all worth it. There are interviews on Lateline and Late Night Live with Andrew West.
They think his main achievements were first getting the job, and then winning the election by the narrowest of margins. He got the job because he wasn’t Tony Abbott – no-one had any enthusiasm for him personally. Continue reading Saturday salon 10/9
As Malcolm Turnbull jetted off to China for the G20 meeting this weekend after the debacle of Labor taking over the House of Representatives, he would have had much to think about in terms of our relations with China. Apart from the South China Sea, there had been knocking back investments such as Ausgrid and the Kidman property. Until the Sam Dastyari incident blew up, paying politicians bills had been business as usual for the Chinese. Now they’ve found “disease-causing bacteria” including E. coli and stahpyloccocuss in milk shipments and have put the whole industry on notice.
The Camperdown Dairy Company say whatever the problem is, it’s not the presence of “disease-causing bacteria”. Such incidents tend to have a different meaning when dealing with the Chinese. Continue reading China on his mind
Labor took control of the House of Representatives on Thursday evening in an attempt to pass a resolution to set up a banking royal commission. Eventually the Government mustered enough numbers to shut it down after losing three procedural votes.
It was a timely warning to the Government that their control of the House is fragile and Labor is going to play hardball.
An angry Malcolm Turnbull says the Government was “embarrassed, humiliated, excoriated”. Continue reading Saturday salon 4/9
Arguably the biggest story on the Australian political scene last week was the protesters interrupting Malcolm Turnbull in a speech in a posh Melbourne hotel telling the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (ceda) that Good budget management is a vital component of our economic plan as if they didn’t know.
Protestors infiltrated the venue, posing as media:
Continue reading Asylum seekers: time to close the bloody camps!
In the AFR Fleur Anderson tells us that women are becoming demonstrably disenfranchised from the Coalition. Only 13 out of the 76 or 77 LNP MPs elected to the House of Representatives are women. There’s only one, Robertson’s Lucy Wicks, in the 35 seats of Australia’s most populous region, the Sydney basin. Three Liberal women were turfed out in favour of Labor women.
“To say Liberal women are dismayed is an understatement,” says Anderson. Continue reading Turnbull’s problem with women and has he bought an election?
Malcolm Turnbull was talking up his victory, saying the people had put its faith in his team, just as Labor took the lead by eight votes in Herbert (I think there are a few hundred votes to count, before the recount) and the Senate was far from settled.
He said the next term would be a term of “delivery” of his “strong plan”. He’ll have to shake a leg, because parliament won’t meet until 30 August, which could give him around two years. More about that soon.
The full ministry is at Wikipedia, but here are the main changes: Continue reading Malcolm tweeks his ministry
While Antony Green at the end of Saturday night deemed the election result unknowable, Bill Shorten gave a victory speech that declined to claim victory, but said the Coalition had lost their mandate. “Labor is back”, he said.
Turnbull waited until after midnight, claimed a victory in the making, and in what many considered an ungracious speech, blamed everyone except himself. It was a political speech which neglected some of the conventions. Michelle Grattan, in an excellent analysis, said he was “extraordinarily lacking in self-awareness”, “showed not a scintilla of humility” and “made no gesture of contrition, no promise that he had heard the message the people had delivered.”
Let’s look at the numbers. Continue reading What have we done?
While it is far too early for polls to be genuinely predictive, a new crunching of the numbers has produced a plausible scenario where the crossbench including Xenephon will simply be irrelevant, and the Greens alone will hold the balance of power in the Senate if numbers are fairly even in the HoR.
Metapoll intends to do polling of voters intentions for the senate, as will no doubt other pollsters. Meanwhile they have analysed recent polls by other organisations and inferred from them a senate result using the NSW upper house election data as a proxy for preference flows, as its voting system is most similar to the new senate voting laws. This is how it came out: Continue reading Narrow Turnbull win could be a nightmare
No more zingers for Bill Shorten, and now voice coaching from Dean Frenkel, a throat singer and lecturer in public speaking and communications at Victoria University, who thinks we all need lessons in elocution. After 14 years as a union rabble rouser Bill tried to soften his image. But: Continue reading Saturday salon 16/4
It seems Malcolm Turnbull will add climate change to the growing collection of policy areas, including funding for schools and hospitals, where he will essentially kick the can down the road to after the election. The third phase of The Climate Change Authority’s Special Review is due by 30 June 2016. That report will “recommend what action Australia should take to implement outcomes flowing from the Paris climate conference in a final report by 30 June 2016.”
Obviously the Turnbull government will not formulate a response before a July 2 election. Continue reading Where to with climate change policy?
As we head towards an election Huffington Post reports that the Minor Party Alliance convened by “preference whisperer” Glenn Druery formulated a plan on the weekend to mount an assault in the lower house on marginal Coalition and Green seats.
Druery said it was a series of skirmishes rather than war, as they lack the resources for a full-scale assault. Continue reading Minor Parties declare war series of skirmishes
