https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/may/28/news-corp-announces-end-of-nearly-100-australian-print-newspapers-in-huge-shift-to-digital
Hey Rupe, that $50 million Scumo gave your organisation to keep local news reported, wanna hand it back?

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/may/28/news-corp-announces-end-of-nearly-100-australian-print-newspapers-in-huge-shift-to-digital
Hey Rupe, that $50 million Scumo gave your organisation to keep local news reported, wanna hand it back?

From memory I think GM Holden did the same thing to Julia Gillard... although perhaps Joe Hockey didn't ask for it back either after kicking them in the back of the head.

Apparently COAG is now a thing of the past. Replacing it will be more frequent National Cabinet meetings. To be honest the National Cabinet concept has generally been a good thing during the pandemic and has seen a welcome slice of collaboration instead of confrontation between stakeholders.

The catch is that there will now be 20 years of secrecy, with Cabinet documents hidden for that period of time and FoI not allowed. Not sure if many people realise this.

Apparently COAG is now a thing of the past. Replacing it will be more frequent National Cabinet meetings. To be honest the National Cabinet concept has generally been a good thing during the pandemic and has seen a welcome slice of collaboration instead of confrontation between stakeholders.

The catch is that there will now be 20 years of secrecy, with Cabinet documents hidden for that period of time and FoI not allowed. Not sure if many people realise this.

Relax, nothing to see here. Not a spectator sport.

Well despite a seemingly horrible six months ScoMo has flown past Albo to become Australia's preferred Prime Minister 56% to Albo's miserable 26% according to Newspoll tonight.

Looks like the Labor Party are on track to lose even more seats at the next election despite the incompetence and bumbling of the LNP - quickly, someone buy them a clue before its too late!

Well despite a seemingly horrible six months ScoMo has flown past Albo to become Australia's preferred Prime Minister 56% to Albo's miserable 26% according to Newspoll tonight.

Looks like the Labor Party are on track to lose even more seats at the next election despite the incompetence and bumbling of the LNP - quickly, someone buy them a clue before its too late!

Can you see a standout candidate for ALP Leader in lieu of Albo? I'm blowed if I can. They're the most colourless mob I can remember.

Well despite a seemingly horrible six months ScoMo has flown past Albo to become Australia's preferred Prime Minister 56% to Albo's miserable 26% according to Newspoll tonight.

Looks like the Labor Party are on track to lose even more seats at the next election despite the incompetence and bumbling of the LNP - quickly, someone buy them a clue before its too late!

Can you see a standout candidate for ALP Leader in lieu of Albo? I'm blowed if I can. They're the most colourless mob I can remember.

Chris Bowen is the obvious choice although he's also dull as dishwater - perhaps slightly more pragmatic than Albo; Tanya Pilbersek was mooted for a while but her husband is in jail so it's kinda tricky. Nobody else on the Labor front-bench seems to stand out, you're right.

I know that you're going to disagree with me on this point but I think the ALP needs to take a turn to the right and stop trying to appease these minority groups like the climate change fanatics and the seemingly very noisy "big Australia" lobby. Shorten really jumped the shark for me at the last election when he announced 200,000 aged parent visas to be practically given away to new residents (@ $5,000 each) when the Productivity Commission clearly said that the cost to Australia of each of those visas was around $320,000-$440,000 over the life of each new resident.

Stupid decisions like that could financially break Medicare and Centrelink as it would give entitlements to anyone and everyone including full aged pension and Medicare that those people had in no way contributed to. Australians over many generations had paid taxes into and built them up to be viable only for them to be destroyed in 10-20 years as a result of too many aged pensions and too many sick and dying new residents. Labor clearly didn't understand the totally disastrous financial implications of that decision - and all so that they could suck up to the Chinese and Indian residents already here on student and "skilled" visas who were unlikely to be able to vote for them anyway.

Same with Shorten's bottomless pit carbon amelioration scheme that they refused to put a price tag on... it's bad enough with these LNP spendthrift junkies in charge but Labor promised to make things a hundred times worse in a very short period of time, and that's without considering the $200 billion-odd that had to be spent this year on managing this COVID19 thing.

They need to get back to basics and start making a plan for jobs and a plan for hand-to-mouth people (of which there are four or five million) to be able to participate in society and perhaps even own homes as Menzies enabled. Irony I know but Menzies record of economic participation was unrivalled in later years despite the fact that he was a Liberal. Where are the Labor plans to lift the poor out of their poverty trap - where is the "light on the hill"?

I know that you're going to disagree with me on this point

Wrong! I do not disagree.

Tanya Pilbersek was mooted for a while but her husband is in jail so it's kinda tricky.

I know he did two years and nine months of a nine years sentence for heroin dealing, but he was subsequently paroled and given a plum job by Barry O'Farrell (aka Fatty O'Barrel). I thought he'd kept his nose clean ever since.

I know he did two years and nine months of a nine years sentence for heroin dealing, but he was subsequently paroled and given a plum job by Barry O'Farrell (aka Fatty O'Barrel). I thought he'd kept his nose clean ever since.

As far as I know you are correct.

Tanya Pilbersek was mooted for a while but her husband is in jail so it's kinda tricky.

I know he did two years and nine months of a nine years sentence for heroin dealing, but he was subsequently paroled and given a plum job by Barry O'Farrell (aka Fatty O'Barrel). I thought he'd kept his nose clean ever since.

Okay, wasn't up with the latest as to whether he was out of jail yet or not. The fact that someone gave him a plum NSW public service job isn't surprising in the least.

I know that you're going to disagree with me on this point

Wrong! I do not disagree.

It's scary how much we do agree on at times...

I think there's three fundamental things that the Labor Party can do at a national level to reconnect with the lost legions of voters who have kept them out of office for 18 of the last 24 years. Number one, they have to come out with policies that are strongly pro-jobs and pro-Australian workers. For me that would mean a policy at a national level which would see all payroll taxes abolished at a state level; that thing is an anathema from another time when they wanted to tax larger companies at the expense of smaller businesses and any tax on labour needs to go. Needs to be part of a broader shift of the taxation burden from labour (income tax) to taxing capital and capital gains more heavily.

Number two is a commitment to make up for that lost tax revenue by ensuring that multinationals and very large corporations pay their fair share of tax - we have over a third of top 100 companies in this country paying no tax whatsoever on revenue (the list is surprising - Mitsubishi Motors, Ford Australia, Unilever). If Labor made a commitment to ensure that more big multinationals paid tax they'd win votes I'm sure and it could also help to pay for taxation reform in other parts of the economy.

Finally we need to have every single one of those so-called 'free trade' agreements examined and in any cases where there's a lop-sided relationship or our partners are not honouring their part of the bargain the agreement should be terminated. The terms and conditions are never policed properly - it's about time they were. We need to show the rest of the world that we're nobody's fool and that we will not be pushed around by China or anyone else for that matter.

There's a rumour on the internet today that Scotty has told cabinet to begin preparing for a January or February election. They're ahead in the two-party preferred at the moment but ScoMo is miles ahead of Albo as preferred PM so he may wish to capitalise on that and go to the polls early.

There's a rumour on the internet today that Scotty has told cabinet to begin preparing for a January or February election. They're ahead in the two-party preferred at the moment but ScoMo is miles ahead of Albo as preferred PM so he may wish to capitalise on that and go to the polls early.

I do wish that the Commonwealth would follow Victoria's lead and have fixed dates for elections. Make the government run its full term, and give the voters some certainty about the next election. At present, an election is frequently seen as a tool to be used by an opportunistic prime minister and I'm sure that's not what the founding fathers intended.
ScoMo has picked up a lot of bonus points for his handling of the pandemic crisis, whereas Albo is colourless in the extreme and is metaphorically kicking into the wind with a wet ball. He reminds me to a certain extent of Caldwell who possibly had the brains, but had no idea how to put any message across.

There's a rumour on the internet today that Scotty has told cabinet to begin preparing for a January or February election. They're ahead in the two-party preferred at the moment but ScoMo is miles ahead of Albo as preferred PM so he may wish to capitalise on that and go to the polls early.

I do wish that the Commonwealth would follow Victoria's lead and have fixed dates for elections. Make the government run its full term, and give the voters some certainty about the next election. At present, an election is frequently seen as a tool to be used by an opportunistic prime minister and I'm sure that's not what the founding fathers intended.
ScoMo has picked up a lot of bonus points for his handling of the pandemic crisis, whereas Albo is colourless in the extreme and is metaphorically kicking into the wind with a wet ball. He reminds me to a certain extent of Caldwell who possibly had the brains, but had no idea how to put any message across.

Should Eden-Monaro fall to the LNP, time for a serious look at Albo’s position.
Labor need a head kicker, Abbott style.
A little unknown but, Jim Chamers, appears to be more suited than others on the opposition front bench.

I do wish that the Commonwealth would follow Victoria's lead and have fixed dates for elections. Make the government run its full term, and give the voters some certainty about the next election. At present, an election is frequently seen as a tool to be used by an opportunistic prime minister and I'm sure that's not what the founding fathers intended.
ScoMo has picked up a lot of bonus points for his handling of the pandemic crisis, whereas Albo is colourless in the extreme and is metaphorically kicking into the wind with a wet ball. He reminds me to a certain extent of Caldwell who possibly had the brains, but had no idea how to put any message across.

I'm in two minds about it - on the one hand it would be good to have regular dates and times for elections as British do but on the other hand it's not bad to let the public have a say on the performance of the government if there's been an important event happen like the change of a leader or similar. Whitlam did exactly that - Hawke did too.

Should Eden-Monaro fall to the LNP, time for a serious look at Albo’s position.
Labor need a head kicker, Abbott style.
A little unknown but, Jim Chamers, appears to be more suited than others on the opposition front bench.

Eden-Monaro is critical - if the LNP win then I think it'll be all go for an early poll.

It's weird that we've had only six years of Labor in the last twenty-four, considering Labor seemed so dominant for many years... although they did have their own version of the Howard/Peacock war with Gillard and Rudd which seemed to prematurely wreak their first shot at government in 11 years. I think it also took their focus off the actual process of government which left a bitter taste in the mouths of voters who still remember the chaos.

Albo's position has been dodgy for quite some time, if Labor are going to head off another loss and give a new leader a good run-up to the 2022 election then they need to do something soon - even more important if there's any early poll. ScoMo isn't stupid, he knows all of this which is why he's mulling over an early election with the excuse of giving the public a say on their performance during the COVID crisis.

Interesting times.

Should Eden-Monaro fall to the LNP, time for a serious look at Albo’s position.
Labor need a head kicker, Abbott style.
A little unknown but, Jim Chamers, appears to be more suited than others on the opposition front bench.

Eden-Monaro is critical - if the LNP win then I think it'll be all go for an early poll.

It's weird that we've had only six years of Labor in the last twenty-four, considering Labor seemed so dominant for many years... although they did have their own version of the Howard/Peacock war with Gillard and Rudd which seemed to prematurely wreak their first shot at government in 11 years. I think it also took their focus off the actual process of government which left a bitter taste in the mouths of voters who still remember the chaos.

Albo's position has been dodgy for quite some time, if Labor are going to head off another loss and give a new leader a good run-up to the 2022 election then they need to do something soon - even more important if there's any early poll. ScoMo isn't stupid, he knows all of this which is why he's mulling over an early election with the excuse of giving the public a say on their performance during the COVID crisis.

Interesting times.

Utterly spot on, unfortunately, Don.
Scumo is not stupid. Lots of other not so favourable abjectives do apply.
Reading earlier today (doing lots of reading of late, so no link) scumo tenure at a tourism job may have been terminated due to fraud and theft and a FOI request was either denied or redacted.
Surprised, not.

There's a rumour on the internet today that Scotty has told cabinet to begin preparing for a January or February election. They're ahead in the two-party preferred at the moment but ScoMo is miles ahead of Albo as preferred PM so he may wish to capitalise on that and go to the polls early.

Care to paste a link for us?

I can think of five big reasons not to do that.
1. The window for a normal half-Senate election doesn't open until the second half of the year, so an election in the first half of the year would be only for the House of Representatives which hasn't been done in 50 years. Two federal elections in a year would probably elicit a hostile response from the voters at the second one, possibly resulting in the current difficult Senate becoming completely uncontrollable.
2. His advisors are not dumb enough to inflict an election on the Australian people during the January holiday season.
3. His advisors are not dumb enough to try campaigning during bushfire season, not after how badly he handled the last one.
4. WA has a fixed date state election in March next year, and the McGowan government is performing so well there that overlapping campaigns could cost the Coalition a seat or two at federal level - and when you only have a majority of two seats you can't afford to give away one or two.
5. Calling an early election to increase your majority never works.

I'd guess that it's either a mischievous rumour, an attempt to flush out a leaker (the current Coalition government has major issues with this, remember the last leadership spill when Patricia Karvelas and Andrew Probyn had a bunch of text messages detailing the exact result and the whole nation could go back to their business well before the official announcement?) or a misinterpretation of being prepared for an election early in the scheduled window.

I do wish that the Commonwealth would follow Victoria's lead and have fixed dates for elections. Make the government run its full term, and give the voters some certainty about the next election. At present, an election is frequently seen as a tool to be used by an opportunistic prime minister and I'm sure that's not what the founding fathers intended.

The USA had fixed term elections even in the 19th century (well before the Australian states that now have them) and the US constitution was studied carefully as part of drawing up the proposed constitution for Australia, so I would suggest that it was a very deliberate move to not go for fixed terms.

If there was a referendum proposal on the matter, I'd certainly vote no if it did not include solutions for these exceptional circumstances - keeping in mind the 1975 supply crisis which came perilously close to becoming an actual constitutional crisis:
1. loss of confidence (should result in the opposition leader's installation as caretaker PM, supply extension bills to be passed by decree as needed to get through the caretaker period)
2. blocking of supply (if within a week of supply expiring, parliament dissolved and a cabinet of the state premiers empowered to present supply extension bills to the GG, then a prompt election with the ex-PM, opposition leader and their respective parties' Senate leaders disqualified from standing)
3. legislative deadlock, i.e. double dissolution (double dissolution election should be mandatory upon the second rejection of a government bill by the Senate, not a weapon the PM gets to keep in their pocket)

I'm in two minds about it - on the one hand it would be good to have regular dates and times for elections as British do but on the other hand it's not bad to let the public have a say on the performance of the government if there's been an important event happen like the change of a leader or similar. Whitlam did exactly that - Hawke did too.

The UK's Fixed-term Parliaments Act is a joke!

Since it took effect, there has been one election on the fixed schedule, one early election which was in step with the Act, and one early election where the Act was flat out beaten into submission by overriding it with a fresh Act.

There is currently a pending Bill to repeal the Act and restore the previous situation of parliamentary terms being capped at five years.

Care to paste a link for us?

Nah it was just some random on Twitter. But it's an interesting theory.

You're absolutely right about the half-senate election and I also think January is unlikely because of the holidays. What about December? The senate will still be hostile as you say but then they can probably get rid of Zali Steggal (Warringah) and get a new Liberal - and then not rely on the Gladys Liu (or not?). They can then turn around to the senate and scream MANDATE - which admittedly would be hard for the hostile cross-benchers to ignore.

What about even earlier - September? If Labor is in chaos from recently stabbing Albo in the back it might be too hard to resist not trying to jack up their House of Representatives majority.

What about December? … What about even earlier - September?

The election can theoretically be held on any Saturday from 7 August 2021 (earliest date for an election called after 1 July) through to 21 May 2022 (latest date to get results in before the 2016-2022 Senate terms expire, if we assume that the Australian Electoral Commissioner's advice to the government on processing times remains the same as it was in 2019). There are of course a whole lot of dates that are practically unavailable during that time, but that is the window available for a normal simultaneous election.

Unless it comes in late October or November, I don't think we will be voting next year. It will probably go to March 2022 (the SA election legislation allows the state election scheduled for 19 March can be changed to keep it clear of a federal election) or May 2022.

My guess would be May 2022 as the 55 weeks before the earliest time Scummo can call an election is more than enough time for his temporary popularity to evaporate, and the default tendency to sit in Kirribilli as long as possible will override any temptation to call an early election.

They can then turn around to the senate and scream MANDATE - which admittedly would be hard for the hostile cross-benchers to ignore.

Not really. They can just calmly vote down a couple of bills and dare the shouty man to bet the house on a double dissolution.

What about December? … What about even earlier - September?

The election can theoretically be held on any Saturday from 7 August 2021 (earliest date for an election called after 1 July) through to 21 May 2022 (latest date to get results in before the 2016-2022 Senate terms expire, if we assume that the Australian Electoral Commissioner's advice to the government on processing times remains the same as it was in 2019). There are of course a whole lot of dates that are practically unavailable during that time, but that is the window available for a normal simultaneous election.

Unless it comes in late October or November, I don't think we will be voting next year. It will probably go to March 2022 (the SA election legislation allows the state election scheduled for 19 March can be changed to keep it clear of a federal election) or May 2022.

My guess would be May 2022 as the 55 weeks before the earliest time Scummo can call an election is more than enough time for his temporary popularity to evaporate, and the default tendency to sit in Kirribilli as long as possible will override any temptation to call an early election.

They can then turn around to the senate and scream MANDATE - which admittedly would be hard for the hostile cross-benchers to ignore.

Not really. They can just calmly vote down a couple of bills and dare the shouty man to bet the house on a double dissolution.

Beg to differ - if Eden-Monaro is a big swing to the Coalition they'll just find it way too tempting; cement the LNP in office for another three years, why not?

ScoMo may have looked terrible during the bush-fires but things have moved very, very fast this year and I think they've come out of the COVID thing looking much better than they did out of the bush-fires. China is a worry and that situation is likely to deteriorate - maybe extra reason to look at an election in case that goes critical.

Don't forget a double dissolution could be called over the block of some triviality twice in which case they don't have to worry about timings. Hell, if the public mood is overwhelmingly in favour of the Coalition then maybe they'll come back with a much more friendly Senate, you never know.

What I'm suggesting is risky - it depends on if ScoMo is a gambler or not. Personally if I was him I'd go for it - Labor is weak and divided, they haven't learned from the last election and all their policies are pretty much the same. I don't think the public will change their minds too substantially from the 2019 election and if he was smart he'd go for it.

Beg to differ - if Eden-Monaro is a big swing to the Coalition they'll just find it way too tempting; cement the LNP in office for another three years, why not?

ScoMo may have looked terrible during the bush-fires but things have moved very, very fast this year and I think they've come out of the COVID thing looking much better than they did out of the bush-fires. China is a worry and that situation is likely to deteriorate - maybe extra reason to look at an election in case that goes critical.

Don't forget a double dissolution could be called over the block of some triviality twice in which case they don't have to worry about timings. Hell, if the public mood is overwhelmingly in favour of the Coalition then maybe they'll come back with a much more friendly Senate, you never know.

You're insane.

We won't be voting this year or before October next year unless there is some massive scandal that brings down the government.

Between now and the end of the year there will be too much happening once we come out of restrictions.
Early next year we will be trying to get back to normal, so I can't see an election at least until after the footy season next year.