It's minor news but I love it anyway. Bronwyn Bishop has lost her preselection for her seat of McKellar. She had long overstayed her welcome in Australian politics and she really won't be missed by the middle Australia that had no influence over her pre-selection. The more interesting aspect of her demise as a political figure might be that her ideological lovechild Tony Abbott had a hand in unseating her.
Tony Abbott has publicly praised Bronwyn Bishop amid anger in sections of the Liberal Party that the former prime minister urged his supporters in Mackellar to end Mrs Bishop's political career in Saturday's preselection vote.
A bloc of 12 votes for Walter Villatora, a member of the hard right who was backed by Mr Abbott, became instrumental in Mrs Bishop's defeat by Jason Falinksi.
Mr Falinksi is a member of the Liberal left - the moderate faction - and it is highly-unusual for the hard right to work towards the ascendancy of a moderate in a seat previously held by a conservative like Mrs Bishop.
The 73 year-old former Speaker retained the backing of the centre-right in NSW despite loud public calls for her retirement and agreement in the senior ranks of the Turnbull Government that her time was up.
Members of the hard right were playing down talk of an official deal on Sunday. "There was no deal done, this one was free of charge," said a source.
But the centre-right is convinced that the hard right planned the hit on Mrs Bishop in collusion with the left and that Mr Abbott had been "hitting the phones hard" to ensure that outcome.
It doesn't really matter. The woman was an ideological nut job that foreshadowed the Tea Party style partisan politics coming to Australia. She was also responsible for running up a huge bill on the public purse, flying around in helicopters on private business, while her resume shows she didn't really do much except be a big noise on behalf of the hard right.
She really was a terrible human being before being an awful member of Parliament and even an awful Speaker of the House to boot. Together with Sophie Mirabella, it is best we consign her to the dustbin of history as soon as possible.
Double Dissolution Coming Down The Pike
Malcolm Turnbull recalled parliament early to debate that ABCC bill for three weeks. The Senate voted it down in a day. That now activated the 2 July date for a Federal election.
The sanguine news for both major parties is that the polls are pretty even.
Double Dissolution Coming Down The Pike
Malcolm Turnbull recalled parliament early to debate that ABCC bill for three weeks. The Senate voted it down in a day. That now activated the 2 July date for a Federal election.
The sanguine news for both major parties is that the polls are pretty even.
The latest Fairfax-Ipsos poll conducted over the weekend put support for the Coalition and Labor across the country on a knife-edge at 50-50, assuming an allocation of preferences similar to those at the last election.
The national survey of 1402 electors was conducted between April 14-16 and showed support for the Coalition had dropped by a statistically significant 3 percentage points since the March poll.
This equates to a 3.5 per cent swing away from the Coalition's share of the vote achieved at the September 2013 election, raising the prospect the election could produce a government with a wafer-thin majority or even another hung Parliament.
The only thing the Coalition have got going is that Malcolm Turnbull is far more popular than Bill Shorten. It's not much to go on if you're a backbencher looking to be wiped out in a 3.5-4.0% swing, but Bob Hawke with his personal popularity won on the back of such numbers in incumbency so it's not like they're toast just yet.
I'm sure I'll get plenty of opportunities to bitch even moe and louder about this truly horrible Coalition Government in the coming weeks so I'll just leave that bit for now. Stay tuned, I shall be whinging with all my might.
Meanwhile The NSW Government Wants To Go Orwellian On Our Sorry Butts
This is just awful, and it's flying under the radar.
I'm sure I'll get plenty of opportunities to bitch even moe and louder about this truly horrible Coalition Government in the coming weeks so I'll just leave that bit for now. Stay tuned, I shall be whinging with all my might.
Meanwhile The NSW Government Wants To Go Orwellian On Our Sorry Butts
This is just awful, and it's flying under the radar.
On March 22, 2016, a set of bills was introduced to the New South Wales Parliament by Deputy Premier and Minister for Justice and Police Troy Grant that included the Serious Crime Prevention Orders Bill and Criminal Legislation Amendment (Organised Crime and Public Safety) Bill.
The acts upon which this amendment is based are shockingly outdated bases for common law. Most date back to the early 90s and one was written in 1900, a time when the faces of both crime and civil liberties were starkly different than they are today. This would be one matter if the intent of the amendment had been to more clearly define violent crimes--such as differentiating hate crimes from others--but instead, the amendment's stated purpose was to "recast the offence of dealing with property suspected of being proceeds of crime so as to adopt certain provisions of the corresponding offence in the Criminal Code of the Commonwealth."
As another site puts it:
The bill would grant police the power to cut off your internet, terminate you from your job, tell you who can associate with, and where you can go if they think you have some association with a “serious” crime.
These “serious crimes” can range from anything as minor as theft, possession of a cannabis plant or illegal gambling to major offences like homicide, kidnapping and extortion.
They are essentially the same laws used for a terror suspect, but they can be applied to any innocent person in New South Wales without their chance at a proper criminal trial.
Why should you be worried?
If the police, who are often wrong, believe you were in some way connected to a crime, they can impose all of these restrictions on your life without having to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
One of the most concerning parts of the legislation is that it can apply to a range of potentially completely innocent people.
As the NSW Bar Association explained, it’s not just for people convicted of the crime – it’s anyone that’s seen to “facilitate” it, which is a very vague term.
You could even get done for simply lending your phone or car to a friend who uses it for a criminal act.
What’s even more sinister is that there’s also basically no reasonable way to appeal the control order once you cop it.
You can only prove it by way of ‘legal error’, which means it’s not a matter of proving whether you’re innocent or not, you have to prove the police didn’t apply the procedure properly.
Pre-crime here we come! It's sinister in that it tries to set up a zone where a person is not innocent because they're suspected of something, which would overturn the principle of innocent until proven otherwise. The government has minimal onus to present its case in any detail, is enabled into malicious prosecutions, and can't be stopped unless they happen to trip up on procedure. Keep in mind, we have no 'Miranda Rights' made explicit in this country, so procedural errors of the police are less likely to be spotted by the legal profession. This is like a leap back to the18th century.
The terrible irony course is that the party wanting to do this is called the 'Liberal' Party. The party that supposedly values individual freedoms.
No comments:
Post a Comment