Bill saved by ‘Super Saturday’
IS Bill Shorten the early winner out of a later Super Saturday?
The decision to delay the Super Saturday by-elections until late July was intended to box Bill Shorten in, but instead it has let him off the hook.
By having the elections then, it clashes with the planned ALP national conference where Shorten would have to battle the party’s left, who are committed to debates about moving Australia Day, walking away from Israel and, worst of all, giving boat people a waiting period on Nauru before coming to Australia.
These ugly fights illustrate how far the party is being pulled to the left and are poison to anyone thinking of changing the government.
But now the by-elections fall on the same date, Shorten can delay or even cancel the conference, sweeping these ugly truths of the party’s more extreme wing under the carpet.
As for the by-elections themselves, it’s worth nothing that the Liberals aren’t standing in two of the five seats.
Their best chance of winning one is off the now defunct NXT in South Australia, or using One Nation preferences to get up in the seat of Longelection; man, north of Brisbane. Braddon in Tasmania is even too close for the bookies to call after the Liberals won the state election there earlier in the year.
“Super Saturday” will be fascinating. If the Libs win nothing, while that’s the way it’s supposed to go in government, it’s a problem for the PM; if Labor goes backwards, Shorten is under the gun with plenty in his own party ready to turn on him the moment the polls or these seats give them the chance.
I’ll vote NO NO NO to us voting for a president
Like most, my eyes glaze over when talk begins of an Australian republic, but a new poll this week concerned me greatly.
Sixty-five per cent of people told the “Essential Poll” they want to vote for the president of Australia, not let the government or Parliament pick the head of state.
This is the worst possible form of a republic.
To vote for a president means an if that happens the parties have candidates and in the end half of the country will feel shut out if their candidate doesn’t win.
Like the current governor-general, the president would have the power to sack governments, and don’t tell me there wouldn’t be pressure on a Liberal president to sack a minority Labor government any time a scandal erupted, and vice versa.
Now, most of the people who push a relic say the office will have no real power in day-to-day government and will be largely ceremonial.
So how will that election campaign look?
Vote for me because I’m better at hosting garden parties.
No, it will inevitably be like any other election and come down to a way of viewing the world, and unlike the PM of the day, we would be giving a personal mandate to the president.
I can be swayed on the case for a republic, but never if we get to pick the president.