By Denis Bright
The hopeful possibilities of reaching out to build a better future for Australians and for our peaceful regional neighbours are under challenge across the political spectrum from more opportunistic political goals. There are possibilities of a return to more social democratic agendas through better policy management in our existing market economy.
The Poll Bludger has conveniently summarized the political milestones which can be scarred by such manipulative politics. Perhaps positive existential changes are in the autumn winds for consolidation by Easter 2024.
Political Milestones Ahead
Here is a quick glance at just three emergent milestones in Dunkley on Outer Melbourne’s Southeast, Ipswich West in Queensland and Tasmania.
Dunkley by-election – 2 March
Inala by-election – 16 March
Ipswich West by-election – 16 March
Queensland councils – 16 March
Tasmania – 23 March
Dunstan by-election – 23 March
Cook by-election – Early 2024
Tasmanian Legislative Council – 4 May
Northern Territory – 24 August
NSW councils – 14 September
Australian Capital Territory – 19 October
Queensland – 26 October
Western Australia – 8 March 2025
Federal election – By 24 May 2025<
Introducing Dunkley Electorate
The federal LNP will benefit from the campaign by Advance as it strives to convince voters that their cost-of-living concerns are all due to the Albanese Government. There is not a scrap of evidence that the Albanese Government is fuelling inflationary pressures by over-spending. If there is a policy negative it is due to overly cautious responses to cost-of-living challenges.
Nikki Savva’s opinion piece in the SMH (15 February 2024) captured the mindset of Peter Dutton on his mission to win Dunkley for conservative populism. Dated polling released through Wikipedia for Dunkley shows that Labor is slightly ahead in polling from uComms.
The polling predicts a remarkably close result. Expect updates later this week to show the impact of the aggressive style of campaigning by both the LNP and the Advance lobbying network. The funding and steering committee of Advance should be fully investigated by mainstream media as this lobbying group seeks to have a higher profile in Australian political life.
A better-than-expected result for Labor’s Jodie Belyea in Dunkley, might make Peter Dutton a casualty of the by-election campaign.
Now Moving onto Ipswich West in Queensland
Once again, conservative populists have tried to make the Ipswich West by-election results an embarrassment for Labor’s Premier Steven Miles with a focus on tough on crime strategies.
Readers can listen to the tone of political discussion in Ipswich West as reported by Radio 4BC to evaluate the even-handedness of the interview between Peter Gleeson and the endorsed LNP Candidate, Darren Zanow.
The negative coverage of the performance of the Queensland Labor Government in this Radio 4BC interview on issues relating to crime and cost-of-living increases contrasts with the current government towards the City of Ipswich.
Both tough on crime strategies and attacks on levels of government spending have a long political history in Ipswich.
Almost a century ago now, the state seats of Rosewood and Ipswich fell temporarily as the Great Depression approached in 1929, a few months before the Great Crash on Wall Street. The seat of Bremer remained with Labor. Both William Cooper in Rosewood and Dave Gledson in Ipswich failed to win their local seats that year. The current state seat of Ipswich West now includes parts of the Ipswich and Rosewood electorates. This gives Ipswich West a level of volatility which has sent two separate LNP representatives to parliament since 1960 and a One Nation state member.
Responding to concerns about crime in Ipswich, the Queensland Premier and Police Minister Mark Ryan announced the following initiatives on 24 February 2024:
The Miles government is making a further significant investment in the capabilities of the Ipswich Police District.
Following a request from the Queensland Police Service for additional police resources for the Ipswich Police District, the government is providing the Queensland Police Service with a funding boost of $37.6 million to deliver the following additional resources:
Premier Steven Miles assured the voters in Ipswich West that:
… Every Queenslander should feel safe in their homes and community. There will always be more police under my government.
This investment will see dozens more police officers, mobile police beats, and extra resources.
This is to keep residents safe, and to catch offenders…
But Labor’s Tough on Crime Strategies must always be embedded in Labor values to protect human rights with the delivery of sustainable and socially just economic and community development policies. This contrasts with the imprisonment of the now deceased Bob Gibbs MLA (Wolston electorate in Ipswich) for joining in Right to March resistance during the Bjelke-Petersen era in the 1980s.
Street crime is not the only form of criminal activity which state Labor governments have successfully confronted. Previous Labor Governments of Queensland have come down heavily on corrupt practices in the corridors of power and influence within the former Independent Ipswich City Council. This Council was placed under the control of a team of administrators with criminal convictions and even prison sentences to the worst offenders (Brisbane Times 9 January 2020).
Labor also formed the Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC) under the Goss Government in the 1990s as an income earner for the people of Queensland through strategic investment programmes. Unlike Queensland Treasury investments in the Bjelke-Petersen era, the QIC became a quasi-independent investment arm of the Queensland Government. Although the state premier and state treasurer are the only supervising shareholders in the QIC, it is quite unethical for them to be involved in day-to-day operations of the investment fund. However, the Queensland Government can make recommendations to the QIC to implement its planning goals (ShapingSEQ Plan 2023).
Premier Steven Miles in his capacity as Minister for Infrastructure was quite prepared to note my suggestions about the use of QIC investment and direct state government funding for the redevelopment of parts of the Ipswich CBD at a social function at parliament house in November 2023. It is an asset to have such approachable leaders in office with polling profiles that are tracking upwards in the latest poling from uComms in The Courier Mail (24 February 2024).
Co-investment between government agencies and the private sector can strengthen the economic, social and environmental goals embedded in the ShapingSEQ Plan 2023. It is an outreach of the New Keynesianism which has no rapport in far-right LNP circles with their fixation on the bricks and mortar of suburban shopping complexes in places like Yamanto in the Ipswich West electorate. Responsible government intervention can broaden the base of such projects.
Yamanto Shopping Village is a neighbourhood centre anchored by a high performing Woolworths supermarket, Super Amart, McDonalds, Caltex and another 25 specialty tenants. The village is situated on a prominent corner location 35km south-west of Brisbane and 5km south of Ipswich City Centre.
It is a credit to the Queensland Government that revenue from the QIC is available to enhance community development options across Ipswich. QIC returned $127.1 million in profits to the state government with a return of 20 percent on assets in the latest available annual report for 2022-23 from assets under management.
Not all its decisions have great logical appeal, including the wisdom of some QIC’s property investments in the USA in shopping malls and offices to deliver profits back to Queensland.
At the far-off Ohio State University in Columbus, the QIC invested $US483 million in the management of CampusParc to manage the car-parking facilities for students and staff as well as clients to the Wexner Medical Centre on Campus in 2012. This property asset has almost doubled in value according to Bloomberg’s Company News Report (27 September 2023). QIC has invested in similar facilities at Northeastern University in Boston with another 50-year contract. Profit taking on such deals can provide additional revenue for the Queensland Government.
A cool one billion dollars at least would be available from the sale of some US property assets from the still lucrative US property market could assist in revitalising the Ipswich CBD through new co-investment arrangements to transform Top of Town in Ipswich which has suffered from decisions by previous Independent Ipswich City Council administrations to move the hub of retailing across the Bremer River to the Riverlink Shopping Centre with great problems to cross-river traffic flows.
The movement of the hub of retailing in Ipswich to the Riverlink Shopping Centre in North Ipswich through the efforts of insiders in the former Independent Ipswich City Council still needs further investigation by Queensland CCC. Hopefully, QCC’s prior investigations of these issues are not permanently closed.
Installing a new member of parliament at a mid-term by-election is always challenging as shown by the close results in a previous by-election which made the transition from a retiring Ivor Marden MLA to Vi Jordan MLA in 1966. This was indeed a close call. This time Wendy Bourne does not have such high-profile contenders to challenge her transition to serve the people of Ipswich West (Images: Wikipedia).
And Onto the Tasmanian Elections
Any tidal wave of favourable LNP election results in Dunkley, Inala and Ipswich West, would create some momentum for survival of the Rockliff Liberal Government which is the last cab off the rank in this round of elections in March 2024 (Image: Wikipedia)
Available polling from Tasmania still predates the decision of the currently dissident Independents and former Liberal Party members to bring down the government. The Jackie Lambie Network (JLN) is now a significant factor in the forthcoming Tasmanian election. JLN was outpolling the Greens in the now dated YouGov polling (Image: Wikipedia):
If the JLN co-operates with Tasmanian Labor, Rebecca White could be premier after the Tasmanian elections. This would be a historic first to have Labor in-control of all Australian states and territories with Anthony Albanese in charge of the national government.
By the next full moon at Easter, these trendlines will have become political reality with immense longer-term impact on Australians. Keep watching the events as they unfold. Don’t be afraid to have your say on the AIM Network Feedback line unless you want the secretive streeting committees of Advance to have greater controls over our political futures.
Your critical responses are a real barrier to more sleep-walking into the future and more compromises with national sovereignty by obscure lobbyists.
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SKY had a panel discussion about the Dunkley by-election and surprisingly they all agreed that voters in Dunkley had it in for Labor and would give Albanese a drubbing as they embraced Dutton.
I thought, ‘where do they get these people from’.
According to SKY the major grievances in Dunkley are :
The failed referendum on the Voice
Labor’s alleged failures in border protection
The rate increases introduced by the Reserve Bank
The cost of living
All of these according to SKY are the fault of Albanese and the electors in Dunkley will take out their frustrations against Labor on Saturday.
Is that all they’ve got ?
Thanks Denis for offering a big picture of political fluidity at work before the Easter moon .
Could so much happen before Easter?
Terence has noted some amusing points about STY T V and its gang of gabbling goats gathered for garbage redistribution. Lacking “brains” as we used to say it, STY uses the human equivalent of armpits, crutches, crevices, corns, cuticles and cavities to act like thinking exists with that substitution. It does not, and STY has no civilised approach to intellectual matters at all. R Murdoch of the USA foreskin face, is a deficient soul, hating and baiting forever in resentment at being an unholy mess. His network of assorted conservative blobs, blurters, bonkery bummery blathery beasts is designed to irritate and somehow engender profit from mischief. Murdoch’s maggoty media menagerie manipulates with a mastery of the mad and mendacious.
The Queensland Government is already tough on crime. It is our courts who decide who is innocent or guilty, not the LNP as in Bjelke-Petersen times when Labor’s Bob Gibbs MLA went to Boggo Road Prison for standing up against the National Party’s anti-assembly laws.
Thanks Denis for an interesting discussion.
Times of change deserve earnest leadership. The alternative is to be swamped by the politics of marketing and lobbying.
Terrence, your on the money, they have nothing yet seem to conjure up indiscretions that just are not there.
Dutton learned from abbott, cry wolf all the time yet have nothing to offer. Only this time, wolf has been heard up and down dale with not a single one in sight, lol.
If the libs do win Dunkley, australia is fucked. We truly do deserve to be at the arse end of the world.
The Advance Lobbying group is in the front line of the LNP’s Cultural Wars Strategies to redefine Australia’s identity as the Israel of the Pacific. But what will happen in Trump is re-elected? The LNP has made Australia more dependent on ongoing participation in the economic diplomacy of the USA of which the US military industrial complex is an integral part. Trump will make the US military the real essence of its political agendas.
None of the 5 Eyes countries have a culture worth saving, at least in the eyes of those who have full knowledge of telecom systems. Certain societies of the First world are going down. Have you ever wondered, why did telecom and health authorites in Canada, USA, NZ, Australia and the UK allow power densities for the transmission of EMF to be set at levels that are x10 and x100 times higher than China, India and Russia? Safety testing of power transmissions is done on a plastic dummy, once for less than 7 minutes. Forget about 24/7 for 50 years.
You think the drongos employeed by Labor – LNP know what is happening? Really? The war is on your body. Your culture is irrelevant.
The longer you live the more you suck out of ‘their’ system in pensions. Try see it their way, then it makes sense.
To this day, the lies and divisiveness of the colonial machine, via politicians and their servants in the executive and the ‘crown’s’ corrupt, lying and brutal judiciary, and of course their religious backers, obscure the realities of the settlers being sacrificed as cannon-fodder, and haters / murderers of the indigenous and ‘others’.
The settlers and merchants were lied to, duped by yabber-yabber. Unsupported by deed, the whole deal was the settlers and merchants faced the hardships, did the toil, fought the battles, and were grafted for taxes going to the crown, for buggar-all in return.
Anyone who ‘made it’, did so by being hard, tough, resilient, inventive (and often assisted by criminality).
It all became the legend of Oz, and remains so for those ignorant, or seeing advantage, via the dupings of the LNP, and their brutal and exploitative paradise, backed by the world-wide revisionists, the RWNJs and FRWNJs and the $$$ of the failing fossil-fuelers, and god-bothering evangelists. In all, a death cult reworked.
Thankfully, many are slowly awakening to its destructive m.o.
Hurk! Urg! Excuse me for a moment, must dash…gag…choke…hurl. That’s better. Scummo’s speech…arg…vomit…spew…can’t go on…
Canavan the mindless cretin. Canavan the braindead moron. Canavan the vile fornicatewit. Canavan of the half a brain cell.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/at-work/matt-canavan-wins-the-dumbest-comment-about-the-gender-pay-gap-so-far/news-story/6e360df3a79e59a68b4904dc78f98dcc
Oh yes, Canavan the cockroach of parliament.
Jeez, talk about a wholesale fantasy rewriting of the history of Scummo Morriscum! What a vile and (not wholly unexpected from the Costello Lib Meedja) repulsive steaming pile of faeces!
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/what-the-haters-need-to-know-about-scott-morrison-20240227-p5f852.html
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/what-the-haters-need-to-know-about-scott-morrison-20240227-p5f852.html
I like the idea of co-investment to extend the outreach of government spending for the betterment of communities like Frankston and Ipswich.
Interesting read. Thanks
Susssan Ley is playing up the gender pay gap this morning but ignoring the facts.
Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin were labelled major offenders with an apparent pay gap between men and women of around forty percent.
Does that mean that male cabin attendants earn more that their female equivalent or that female pilots earn less that their male equivalent ? NO It DOESN”T !
Evidently what it points to is that there are more male pilots than female and there are more female cabin attendants than male. So, accepting that pilots are paid more than cabin attendants, there is an apparent anomaly but that’s the way it works ; there is no exploitation, there is no discrimination, we just need more female pilots and more male cabin attendants to balance out the apparent anomaly.
The only way albo can lose is if a big mob of labor voters think the greens are not economic lunatics and vote for them.
Our paper published a list of the 100 most powerful.
no1 was Senator Price, one of our 4 federal pollies. The other 3 are Labor. The man comes in at 48, one woman at 95 and the other woman not mentioned.
They also publish letters like ‘…with the clp so prominant …change is in the air…’
Like most of your papers, ours is labor is doing ‘nothing’ or not doing ‘enough’ or ‘doing enough’.
This may resonate enough to duttonise???
LNP purposeful ignorance and sheer bloody-mindedness never ceases to amaze me.
oops Wow, just heard the bandit out-rabbott dutton and my sadness made me miss proof reading ‘doing enough’ so very rare in our paper which invariably lets the clp say it could dfo better.
All labor supporters should no longer doubt this victorian green’s sole purpose is to increase his ability to blackmail whichever party has government.
For the fist time in my life, I feel that labor and the libs should join hands to get rid of the preference system.
A huge bust of Scummo with his mouth open at a sewage plant that spews shit once an hour into the settling pools sounds pretty good to me.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/harold-holt-got-a-pool-curtin-a-pub-what-does-morrison-deserve-for-a-memorial-20240226-p5f7uz.html
Cigar Hockey is demanding that ASIO release the name of the naughty politician, no doubt partly in the hope that it’s a Labor person so the main sleaze meedja can go into ruptures of confected anger and outrage.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-28/asio-reveals-plot-by-retired-politician/103513926
GL
Very strange that the ASIO Head would throw out ‘red meat’ to the media by alleging that a former Australian politician betrayed Australia to a foreign power. Naturally the media were all over this particularly as the errant politician has not been named and it seems that it has been left to the media to swarm over.
Joe Hockey jumped on this from Washington and obviously knows something about this matter and he insists that the ex politician be named as, he noted, without a name it is a smear on all retired politicians.
Should Burgess have done this ?
Having kicked this off in a public forum, Mike Burgess as Head of ASIO, risks the possibility of being sued for defamation as and when the person is identified as inevitably they will.
Clearly to me, Burgess was talking about the Howard Liberal era and there are certainly a lot of dodgy characters to speculate about not overlooking the Nationals of course …………….so who do you think it is ?
“…so who do you think it is ?”
Terence, it’s been suggested elsewhere that it’s Morrison, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Defamation action would be out of the question if Burgess has proof?
Steve Davis
What intrigues me is what Burgess’ motive was in tossing this grenade into the public arena at this particular time.
He said that a former Australian politician “sold out their country, party and former colleagues” to “advance the interests of a foreign regime” several years ago, and said that the unnamed MP even suggested connecting a prime minister’s family to an international spy ring (it didn’t eventuate).
“ASIO calls the ring the “A-Team” — a group of spies run by an overseas intelligence service who pretend to be “consultants, head-hunters, local government officials, academics and think tank researchers”, who offer targets lucrative consulting opportunities to get reports on our trade, politics, economics, foreign policy, defence and security.”
“A lucrative consultancy”, there’s a clue right there but I’m not going to stick my neck out.
This is better than Wordle !
Oddly enough Terence, your description of the group of spies sounds more likely to be of US or UK origin than anywhere else, but we will probably never know.
If it is one of our allies, it will be hushed up.
But one thing we can be sure of.
When the political sphere and the intelligence agency sphere intersect, things get very murky. The whole truth rarely sees the light of day.
Remember the trouble Thatcher went to to squash the Spycatcher story?
Even in that case it would have been only half the story.
My speculation is that it is the state politician who signed the MOU for the belt and road funding, who made a trip to China without a specific reason, who banned the media from accompanying him, who then resigned unexpectedly.
The Costello meedja is still trying to spin The Smirk in a good light. He will always be at the bottom of the list followed by, dog help us if it occurs, Der Spud if the concrete cannonball should ever become PM.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/where-does-scomo-rank-in-the-pantheon-of-former-pms-20240228-p5f8hf.html
Speaking of the cannonball: that’s more the “smile” of a seriously creepy psychopath.
https://static.ffx.io/images/$zoom_0.191%2C$multiply_0.9788%2C$ratio_1.5%2C$width_756%2C$x_0%2C$y_0/t_crop_custom/q_86%2Cf_auto/bae0cb9414d7c996d2b12b8d27c35fb4182a8626
I put together some key words like former federal minister and lucrative consultancy and added a speculative Chinese to Google former federal minister lucrative Chinese consultancy
nudge nudge, wink wink,say no more
Speculation, guesses, stabs in the dark, but, here in front of us have been totally untrustworthy Hockey, ratbag mad Morrison, Prossy Pyne, Raving Robb, Anthraxy Anderson, a long line of Un-Australian ruthless, selfish, ambitious, greedy, approval seeking, status searching, career feathering ex-politicians. Interconnections with ex-Australian Foreskin faced media magnatemogul Merde Dog is “natural”, as all sorts of networks and “brotherhoods” exist. Never trust a cunning conservative…
Commentator: It was a FEDERAL politician. Sorry to disappoint you.
I think Terence’s ferreting might be on the money. Looking forward to Dutton’s eventual squirreling when the name is revealed.
Canugro
The LNP are trying to tag Sam Dastyari who disputes that he is the man : Joe Hockey has been very vocal from Washington and he wants the person named (long time since we’ve heard from Joe).
As claims are made on talk back radio with Dutton insisting it’s a Labor former politician and the media interviewing each other it is inevitable that the person will be identified : the sooner the better as far as I’m concerned and I agree with Hockey that without being named this smear affects all former politicians no matter their partisan affiliation.
Sewermouth Suss (@7.51am)
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2024/mar/01/australia-news-live-asio-mike-burgess-dunkley-byelection-anthony-albanese-peter-dutton-jesse-baird-luke-davies-sydney
And dog whistle Dunce @9.59am
https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-news-live-asio-boss-refuses-to-name-ex-mp-who-sold-out-country-states-debt-soars-putting-pressure-on-inflation-20240301-p5f8zd.html
Now he’s denying that he “jumped the gun” (8.53am). Bullshit! Der Spud and Sewermouth saw it and couldn’t wait to spew their bile.
Good luck getting that through parliament. Chances of success: eff all and none.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/voters-back-drug-and-alcohol-tests-for-politicians-20240229-p5f8xm.html
It seems Jeremy Rockliff has pledged to open protected native forests to logging. If the Tasmanians re-elect a Liberal government it ought to be to their eternal shame; or perhaps realpolitik dictates that they’re such a backward backwoods bunch that they have no sensitivity of serious note, the sensitive minority excepted.
Canguro, I’m not surpised, he’s scared shitless that he’ll lose next month. What’s the bet that the brainless aresholes here vote him (probably with yet another minority gubmint) and his gang of crooks back in again? Why not just come out and say that he’s going to chop down every tree in the state and damn the consequences as long as it gets him back in gain.
Canguro,
Cheerful extra thought;
If Tassie Forests operate with anything like the the legislative enablement currently gifted to NSW Forestry Corp, areas where predominately native regrowth occurs subsequent to prior logging can be arbitrarily classified as ‘plantation’ even if there has been little/no active assistance/intervention in naturally occuring vegetative regeneration processes.
Of course, once a ‘plantation’ area becomes ‘reactivated for economic activity’, any voluntary documentation of actual on-ground biotic composition becomes a potentially fraught activity.
Yes, if you must be assaulted by criminals always go for the ‘strayan criminals (but make sure they are the right colour of course), because they are ever so much nicer than the nasty foreigners.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/sussan-ley-stands-by-foreign-criminals-tweet-on-eve-of-dunkley-byelection-20240301-p5f903.html
The Spud and Annabelle are truly repulsive and vomit inducing scumbags.
I heard the Liberal candidate for Dunkley demanding that we have a conversation about nuclear power and ‘small modular reactors’ and when the journalist started to ask him about cost, location, time-frame for delivery etc he didn’t want to have a conversation at all.
As pointed out in an article in The Guardian This is what happens when an uncosted Coalition thought-bubble on nuclear power is presented as a concrete proposal
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/29/the-australian-newspoll-survey-small-modular-nuclear-reactors-smr-energy-grid-plan
I sincerely hope that the voters in Dunkley can see through these snake-oil salesmen.
Personally, I think there is nothing wrong with someone selling serpentine sourced oleaginous extracts so long as the content labels and associated claims are provably accurate.
“Contains 50/50 blend of pressed olive oil and the subcutaneous secretions of domesticated pythons.
May have a placebo reaction upon the easily suggestible”
It’s the diddling mountebanks that give honest snake-oil salespeople a bad name.
The by-election result in Dunkley was remarkably similar to the ucomms polling. This was included in my article.
Congratulations to Labor’s Jodie Belyea MP.
The election caravans now move onto Inala and Ipswich West in Queensland on the same day as local government elections across Queensland and of course in Brisbane City.
Stay close to initiatives on cost-of-living issues in Brisbane as targeted by Labor’s Mayoral Candidate Tracey Price and the results in Brisbane might surprise everyone.
My advice would be to adjust rates and charges from big offices, housing units of up to 62 floors in Brisbane and those sprawling shopping malls to protect struggling households from rate increases in the context of Labor’s reduction of bus fares by half.
Brisbane is a big budget city with expenditure of $4.4 billion which has a billion dollar deficit because of the failure of the BCC to address potential revenue from the Big End of Town.
The LNP is not a competent economic manager of Brisbane’s finances.
In Ipswich West, the retiring Labor state MP will stand for Division 4 of the ICC on 16 March. Premier Miles’ police staffing initiatives should tone down concerns about criminal activity in Ipswich.
Revitalizing the heritage precincts in inner-Ipswich with co-investment in central city infrastructure, shopping precincts, inner-city sporting facilities and affordable housing are all crime prevention initiatives.
Projects like the Pradella Group’s multifunctional investment in Montague Markets in West End can be redevelopment models for parts of Inner Ipswich with additional government support both directly and through the Queensland Investment Corporation.
Even before I identified with Montague Markets in Brisbane, I was so impressed by the redevelopment of the Central Park Mall near Central Station in Tanya Plibersek’s electorate of Sydney (https://www.centralparkmall.com.au/Development/Development-News).
The Advance campaign has failed in Dunkley. No effort should be spared by critical journalists in investigating the origin of funding for this nasty campaign which debates respectable political debate and discussion with rough politics style of the Deep South of the USA.
A swing after preferences and the prolonger counting of postal votes in the 4-4.5 percent range is a real victory for Labor in the context of the Advance campaign.
There is no doubt that the Liberals had a good candidate in Dunkley : an articulate, gregarious Irish man with a sense of humour but perhaps he was in the wrong seat.
The Liberals consider Dunkley as their seat having held it from 1996 to 2019, however a 2018 boundary redistribution tended to favour Labor who retained the seat with a minimal swing, and that’s after the Liberals picked up the One Nation and Palmer United voters with neither of these minor parties having fielded a candidate as they did in the federal election.
Notably it seems that the efforts of Advance to blame Labor for all the woes of the world had little or no effect. Having said that, the efforts of the independent Reserve Bank did not help Labor and Advance attempted to sheet home recent rate rises as Labor’s fault : the previous Reserve Bank Governor needs to reflect on his political influence, having stated that interest rates would remain steady until 2024 and then inflicting thirteen consecutive increases on aspiring homeowners .
Dutton failed to make an appearance on polling day which tells us a lot about how popular the Liberal leader is in Victoria.
The Greens saw a drop in their primary vote of more than 4% perhaps reflecting their recent attempts to gain notoriety by blocking progressive legislation, particularly in the area of housing policy ; something they will need to think about.
Overall a good result for Dunkley and Labor.
Dunkley (at a glance).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Dunkley_by-election
Labor retained the seat, gaining 0.79% in primary but dropping 3.59% in 2PP.
LIBs failed to win but gained 6.37% in primary votes and 3.59% by 2PP.
Greens primary dropped by 3.84% (<4%) likely bleeding most of this to Animal Justice (+0.79%) & VicSoc (+1.79%), although the Labor, indi & libertarian candidates probably also benefited.
The lack of PHON & PUP candidates probably boosted LIB primary vote, but would have had little effect on 2PP as most Hanson/Palmer votes tend to flow to the coalition anyway
Not exactly a resounding triumph for Labor, but a victory nonetheless.
The LNP usually performs well on postal votes as it has the resources to harvest postal vote applications through PVA Centres which are really LNP controlled Post Office Boxes in disguise.
The practice is already at work at the BCC Council elections for 16 March to harvest votes from electors who cannot or do not want to visit a polling booth.
The worst feature of the Dunkley by-election was the role played by Advance.
Details of all expenditure by Advance and the members of its steering committee should be fully investigated by journalists and the AEC itself.
Such nasty politics have no place in democratic processes and are a return to the politics of the Bjelke-Petersen era.
Modifying the Morrison Government’s Stage 3 Tax Cuts also helped Labor to achieve that slight increase in its primary vote in Dunkley.
A good pre-election synopsis of the threatening campaign against Labor in Dunkley.
Why do our electoral laws tolerate the excesses of the Advance Campaign and the use of mail out personal letters to attract early postal vote applications from the LNP through partisan postal vote centres which parade as genuine advisory services?
Are these practices ethical and accountable?
Labor must take action before the 2025 federal election to make sure the campaigns continue to be focused on cost-of-living problems as the main policy anchors for commitments to the environment, health, infrastructure, affordable housing and less dependence on All the Way with the USA foreign policies.
The $400 billion being squandered on AUKUS defence equipment is really economic assistance by Australian taxpayers to Britain and the USA.
Do Australians want our country to become the New Israel of the Pacific?
Unfortunately, there is no published polling for the by-election in Ipswich West which will be a good pointer to the style of the 2024 state election campaign. The current distribution map is in this summary for readers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_district_of_Ipswich_West).
My family ancestors from both the Ryan and Bright families have been associated with Ipswich since 1876 and somewhat later for members of the Bright family.
Patrick Ryan, his wife Johanna and five children arrived in Ipswich by either train or steamboat in 1876 from Ireland after a perilous journey in which one children was buried at sea and another born on the dockside prior to departure.
Colonial Australia offered great new freedoms for immigrants. This was one of the most prosperous countries on earth. These achievements continue today with the Labor Party in charge of every state and territory government with the exception of Tasmania.
Even the Colonial Parliament in Brisbane offered legal protection for fair political discussion in the historic Defamation Act of 1889:
“Any imputation concerning any person, or any member of the person’s family, whether living or dead, by which the reputation of that person is likely to be injured, or by which the person is likely to be injured in the person’s profession or trade, or by which other persons are likely to be induced to shun or avoid or ridicule or despise the person, is called “defamatory”, and the matter of the imputation is called “defamatory matter.”
In Australia, the new immigrants and their descendants could continue to support Irish Home Rule.
Patrick Ryan (c1846-1878) did not live to see the liberation of Ireland as he died while returning from work in Indooroopilly for QR on the new rail tracks to Ipswich and beyond.
Prior to the completion of the Cutting near Top of Town in Ipswich, rail tracks to Toowoomba were via North Ipswich and Brassall to Rosewood. Patrick was killed in a fall on the pedestrian walkway adjacent to the rail tracks.
Without social security, Johanna Ryan brought up her family of five children in Brassall. She married a Malcolm David McClelland and had two more children. Johanna (1c1848-1919) was given a grand send-off at Red Hill Catholic Church where she lived in Paddington (https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/258330723?searchTerm=%22Johanna%20McClelland%22).
I am proud of my associations with Ipswich and mention some background to the Bright side of the equation in this article for AIM Network during the COVID-19 Crisis: https://theaimn.com/into-the-post-corona-era-time-for-more-focus-on-protecting-incomes-and-living-standards/#comments
With the protection of the Defamation Acts and financial membership of the MEAA, journalists have nothing to fear about polite critical comment on public issues.
Our identity as Australians is being threatened by the Deep South style of politics used by Advance in Dunkley to harvest votes back to the LNP. It failed in Dunkley but the far-right will always strive against to promote negativity as a sign of political leadership. Labor is on trial against in Ipswich West and Inala.
On the Labor side of politics, some insiders with connections to lobbyists persistent is promoting commitment to the AUKUS deal. Trade union activists should mobilize against such antics in support for more funding for commitments to healthcare, bulk-billing and affordable housing, Good critical journalist will assist in undermining their influence on our national sovereignty. Rest assured, I am continuing to research this issue for future articles for AIM News Network.
Ireland is a neutral country today. B-52 transits and naval vessels including submarines carrying nuclear weapons carrying nuclear weapons are not welcome in Ireland although every efforts in made by the USA to open up Shannon Airport to more military landings.
To survive prior to the introduction of social security, Johanna operated a fruit shop somewhere in Brisbane Street Ipswich. Her son Park Ryan (really Patrick Leo Ryan) maintained a highly profitable tailoring business, also somewhere in Brisbane Street. My grandfather John Ryan (c1868-1949) operated a saddlery business in Goleby’s Basement in West Street, Ipswich before transferring his skills to the North Ipswich Railway Workshops in the Trimming Shop.
I mention some of this background because I mentioned the need for more investment in retailing, community development and social housing in the heritage precincts of Top of Town to a senior minister at a social function in parliament house. The QIC has vhttps://www.qic.com/Investment-Capabilitiesast property portfolios interstate and overseas, particularly in the USA which generate income to assist the Queensland Government (https://www.qic.com/Investment-Capabilities).
While the LNP reimposes nasty politics from the Bjelke-Petersen era in the Ipswich West campaign, Labor can work on such positive futures for Ipswich.
Still no good polling on the Ipswich West by-election.
The results will be a good predictor for the state elections in late October: Readers might keep a look out for new developments in Ipswich West. This electorate extends out into the Rosewood District some 17 kilometres west of Ipswich where Jim Madden MLA polled well in 2020.
Jim Madden is likely to win a spot on the Ipswich Council from Division 4 and might be assisting Wendy Bourne in her campaign for Ipswich West.
The ICC has strange electoral system after the reinstatement of the ICC with a Mayor and four two member-electorates after the old corruption era was terminated by the state government with the dismissal of the ICC. Lots of decisions on the ICC are based on the recommendations of Council committees.
The electoral map of Ipswich West is included here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_district_of_Ipswich_West).
Suburbs near Karalee are very politically volatile and need to be handled gently by Labor.
While waiting for polling in Ipswich West, readers might like to look at Anthony Green’s comments on this volatile electorate for ABC News: https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/bcc/2024/guide/ipwe
Australians are fortunate to have such an eminent commentator to protect our democratic processes with fair commentary.