An Iranian refugee, Mehdi Ali, detained for nine years and recently Novak Djokovic’s neighbour, has suddenly been released and resettled in the USA.
The Victorian Liberals are preparing to dump veteran Bernie Finn from their ticket for the Western Metro Region in the Victorian Upper House. He has been there since 2006, although was first in the parliament as far back as 1992.
Loading
He has been central to the campaign against abortion reform, same-sex marriage and “dying with dignity” laws. He wants to reintroduce the death penalty and has addressed several anti-vaccination rallies. He may resign from the Liberal Party and could join Clive Palmer’s untidy crew, or run as an independent.
Imagine if Bernie Finn has the balance of power in the upper house of the Victorian Parliament after the November state poll?
The ALP in Victoria is being run by administrators after intervention triggered by claims and confessions of branch stacking.
Loading
Former Premier Steve Bracks and party elder and former federal minister Jenny Macklin are now in charge.
IBAC and the Ombudsman are looking into the self-incriminating admissions by Adem Somyurek, a former Andrews government minister. Confessions were also made by federal backbencher Anthony Byrne, who this week confirmed he will not contest the next election, thus triggering an internal tussle over which faction gets his plum seat.
Veteran senator Kim Carr, seemingly in parliament since dinosaurs roamed the earth, is under pressure to stand aside for younger people but sees no reason to oblige.
The tectonic plates are shifting.
In the eastern suburbs, the Liberal Party have just chosen Nicole Werner, a business development manager at Empower (a subsidiary of the Planetshakers Pentecostal church) as their candidate for the crucial state lower house seat of Box Hill.
For almost 30 years it was regarded as a safe Liberal hold until four years ago, when the voters rejected veteran Robert Clark, attorney-general in the Baillieu/Napthine years. The Greens polled 15 per cent, but only 2 per cent of that flowed to Liberals. Green preferences saw the ALP elected.
The Liberals post-election review argued that the coup against Malcolm Turnbull three months before the 2018 Victorian election cruelled their chances in seats like Box Hill. We will see if that was actually the decisive issue come November.
With all the scandals, intrigue and rorts it is hardly surprising that we are seeing a serious challenge to the two-party system, mostly from climate change and integrity campaigners.
The so-called ‘teal independents’ are making in-roads into traditionally safe Liberal territory.
Typically, Kooyong, Goldstein (around Brighton) and Higgins (Malvern) are electorates where money is raised to be spent elsewhere, defending territory where fundraising is harder. Political patronage works that way – allegiance is pledged to a factional leader in exchange for money and support.
But now, the money raised in these seats is being spent in those seats – with an air of desperation not previously seen.
Liberals in what used to be safe seats have bought expensive billboards, spending millions of dollars to survive. They do not feature the Prime Minister. Nor his deputy.
Loading
In contrast, teal independents have modest posters in front gardens – you cannot be more grassroots than that. I am told the T-shirt printers have run out of teal shirts for printing.
The fragmentation of the two-party system has often been predicted, back with the Australia Party in the ’70s, then the Democrats, then Pauline Hanson.
The two main parties no longer enjoy absolute majorities in state upper houses in NSW or Victoria, nor in the Senate nationally. Might this election see the trend become entrenched?
It’s election year, time for the great policy purge
Source: Philippines Alive
