In the end all the shouting and stomping was for nothing. Momentum lurched one way and then the other only to be stopped dead in its tracks as Julie Bishop got to her feet in the House just after three o’clock yesterday to announce her retirement from politics.
Everyone could take a breather. The quarrels, scandals and policy missteps would take a back seat. Bishop’s announcement led on all news reports with the day to day entrail examination of federal politics either discarded entirely or run somewhere up the back just before the sport, the weather and the amusing cat that does the ironing segment.
A 20-year veteran of federal politics, Bishop was a minister in the Howard government (Education and Science, Women, and Ageing), the first female deputy leader of the federal Liberal Party (erroneously described as Deputy Prime Minister on both the Channel Seven and Nine News services) and Foreign Minister in the Abbott and Turnbull governments since 2013.
Depending on your view, we have just 78 or 85 sleeps before the next election. Of these, just three have been set aside as parliamentary sitting days. Put that in the nice work if you can get it category.
On the final sitting day but three of the 45th Parliament, Bishop not only halted the tawdry to-and-fro politicking, she cast other retiring pollies into the shade.
Euromoney’s MVP in 2009, Wayne Swan’s valedictory speech where he tactfully neglected to mention the 100,000 or so single mothers he, Julia Gillard and Labor dispatched into poverty, was left to nestle deep in oblivion while Labor’s favourite policy nuffy, Jenny Macklin, might wander off into retirement to try her hand at getting by on the Newstart Allowance, as she once boasted she could but now probably won’t.
Bishop took a near marginal seat to the safest confines on the electoral pendulum. She won almost two thirds of the primary vote in the 2016 election. She enjoyed a three per cent swing on primary vote while nationwide the Coalition lost 14 seats with a 3.55 per cent swing against it.
Depending on your vintage, is JBish the Keith Miller or the Shane Warne of Australian politics, e.g. the best captain we never had? Had she emerged triumphant from the scorched earth of the August 2018 spill, where would the Coalition be now? My best guess is she and it would have enjoyed a significant poll bounce at least in the short term, but we are dealing with fantasy politics here. The truth is, she could only find 11 supporters out of 85 in the party room and once that grim news hit home, her decision to retire from politics was only a matter of time.
Given the stunning personal support she enjoyed from voters if not the Liberal Party room, we can safely say there will be a swing against the Liberals in Curtin at the next election. It may be a beaut, if the Liberals get the politics of the preselection wrong. Worse, it could have a knock-on effect in other seats where margins are much tighter (Andrew Hastie in Canning, 6.8 per cent and Stirling where Michael Keenan is retiring, 6.1 per cent).
The Coalition could lose the next federal election in Western Australia alone. On the betting at this moment, Labor would pick up Hasluck (Ken Wyatt), Pearce (Christian Porter) and Swan (Steve Irons).
Those bubble bound necromancers in Canberra have long thought the retirement of Bishop would allow Christian Porter to seamlessly traverse electoral borders and ensconce himself as lord of the manor in Curtin.
Porter is one of the Liberal Party’s brightest charges, the current attorney-general and a potential leader of the parliamentary party.
We can also safely assume there will be no captain’s picks of candidates in Curtin given the arcane nature of Western Australian Liberal Party which has been fussin’ and feudin’ since I was a lad.
Another retiree from parliament, the National MP for Mallee, Andrew Broad, a man who regarded himself as something of a James Bond of Australian politics — whether it was a Craig, Lazenby, Moore, Connery, Dalton, Brosnan or Woody Allen, I cannot say — did offer something of a scientician’s view of gender and politics in a door stop to SkyNews yesterday.
“Politics,” Broad said, “is very gruelling on people who want to have a family and the very nature of biology is that it’s tougher on women.”
I am not entirely sure what that means but it seems to me that upsetting a good chunk of 51 per cent of the voting public is not an especially solid strategy in electoral politics.
Bishop has called for a woman within the party to replace her. The parachute drop of Porter into Curtin, while eminently sensible, will necessarily and obviously cause headlines and very possibly widespread consternation. It will not be an easy preselection. This is a case of politics pointing to one outcome while logic points to another.
In the end it might not matter, especially if the people of Victoria decide to put the Liberal Party’s lights out a good two hours before the votes start rolling in from the west. But if an unlikely victory is to remain possible or even if furniture is to be saved, what happens in Curtin in the next two months will be crucial to the Coalition’s future.
This column was first published in The Australian on 22 February 2019
Sydney’s population falling. kewl story eh?
“In NSW, more people are choosing public transport to commute to work, rather than driving, while Sydney’s population has also been falling, with the city losing 18,000 people in 2017 partially due to the high cost of housing, Terrill says.”
https://www.afr.com/business/fares-taking-their-toll-on-sydney-drivers-20190226-h1bq4j
As odious a man as Pell is, I feel uneasy at the fact that he was convicted on the evidence of one man alone at the trial.
Although there can be little doubt that he knew what was going on in Ballarat. Which makes him complicit in the crime of child abuse cover up. That probably deserves the punishment anyway.
this highlights everything wrong about the coalition attacking whistleblowers and making it illegal to speak out against wrongdoing just like the ABCC charging 150 workers for attending a rally.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/small-business/ato-whistleblower-faces-six-life-sentences-roughly-the-same-as-ivan-milat-20190226-p510d2.html
POTUS Trump arrives in Hanoi, Vietnam, Mr. Insider ahead of the Summit Talks with Kim Jong-un who had arrived a day or so ago by Train.
A nice gesture of Donalds would be to give Kim a ride home after the Summit in Air Force One! Poor old Kim does not appear to have any “Sky Wheels” and has to borrow a 747 off China at times. Just a thought.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44dWe9gLmtk
Conviction achieved. Other matters dropped, now a shot at an appeal.
I hope we are not looking at a long game Houdini act.
Keep twitching
Yep, had the same conversation with a very senior vic lawyer new years eve over dinner
“The courtroom was stunned when the verdict was delivered. Many did not expect the result. “It’s f..king gobsmacking,’’ a senior lawyer with no affection for Pell said.”
He was a senior lawyer , a prosecutor rather than a defender by history, and thought the case very, very thin.
We had already discussed Lawyer X and worked out that we both knew who she was without disclosing her name, so he was properly discreet but knowledgable.
“The Pell team and many others are absolutely convinced the cardinal is the victim of a grave injustice, right from the moment police in 2013 launched Operation Tethering to investigate him, even though the cardinal hadn’t had an allegation against him. This is quite disturbing. Police went hunting for Pell and eventually came up with a complainant.”
This disturbs me, as does so much of the commentary which betrays a desire to make an example of Pell, not for his own sins, but for the sins of the Church.
If that were the case it would be wrong. I feel no sense of triumph here. I was present when the suppression orders were lifted and his conviction formally announced but that was my only appearance. The problem I have with the media personalities who claim Pell was railroaded is they are making the same mistake as the Church and all the other institutions where children were abused on their watch. They are saying they do not believe the victim (s). That’s pretty much how we got to some 60,000 sexually abused minors in institutional settings since 1950 in this country. Victims invariably say not being believed has a greater impact on them mentally than the offence itself.
perhaps because I am by nature more of a defender than a prosecutor, i don’t think we can have some sort of right to be believed.
As to the commentary there are always lawyers and experienced court watchers with views on a verdict like this, and that is a good thing.
For instance, I believe Frank Brennan is a very good lawyer and while he may be a Catholic priest he is hardly a Pell camp follower, add in his knowledge of liturgical practice and procedure and his opinion is surely worth noting. John Sylvester has been covering courts and coppers for at least thirty years so ditto.
That said, some of the pundits seem to be simply siding with their Tribal Champion, and on the other side there are more than a few who are revelling in the destruction of their opponents champ and the harm done to the Catholic Church.
Perfectly OK to express such views but they don’t add much really. It’s just barracking.
Frankly jack, I agree. I am not sure the jury was able to view the case objectively.
No, I’m not a Pell supporter.
The appeal will be interesting.
Adam Cooper, from The Age, provides a bit of clarity on what the jury had to decide on:
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/the-case-for-and-against-what-the-jury-was-told-in-george-pell-s-trial-20190226-p510f6.html
As does Brennan in the Oz.
getting silly… very silly you bent freaks are already outed
http://digitalfinanceanalytics.com/blog/dfa-blog-under-attack/
I’ve thought all afternoon about how to put this but here goes. If Pell is guilty then long may he rot in hell. But if the evidence as reported in the paper today is ALL the evidence then the verdict will get hosed out in the Appeal Court as unsafe and to be honest it should. Again if that is ALL the evidence he would have never been convicted in a judge only trial which Victoria doesn’t allow.
I’d actually be interested to hear what Voltaire and even JOH thinks.
just another example of the authoritarian nature and hypocrisy of the coalition and their supporters. Fair dinkum
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/industrial-relations/lendlease-gives-names-of-strikers-to-building-watchdog/news-story/7357a63c83f546191ac5e8b1b9d1f151