It’s happening everywhere and fast, from The Australian:
Experts were last night unable to predict who would win the vacancy if Bob Day’s election as a Family First senator on July 2 was ruled invalid.
Mr Day’s running mate, Kenyan-born Lucy Gichuhi, could be a contender while former Liberal senator Sean Edwards and former Labor senator Anne McEwen would come back into the race.
Although Mr Day yesterday resigned from the Senate, if the court rules he was unconstitutionally elected his departure would not create a casual vacancy under section 15 of the Constitution, as had been anticipated, meaning his party would not get to choose who replaces him in the upper house and a recount would be ordered.
The court would also need to decide the status of Family First on the South Australian ballot paper, which could affect the allocation of the 24,817 first-preference votes it received above the line.
Mr Day received 5495 first-preference votes below the line while Ms Gichuhi won 152 votes.
The ultimate winner out of the Bob Day saga — the person who takes the 12th Senate spot — would depend on the distribution of preferences and how they fall.
One Nation received more first-preference votes and a higher quota than Family First, winning 2.98 per cent of the vote compared to Family First’s 2.87 per cent. The distribution of preferences in favour of Mr Day meant he could leapfrog Mr Burgess and Ms McEwen to clinch the final spot.
With Do-nothing Malcom’s policy settings, Pauline Hanson could be PM in two years (only half joking!).
Meanwhile, at Domainfax, Kevin Rudd reappears:
Malcolm Turnbull, in his 12 months in office, has now repudiated virtually everything he once stood for. He has done this because he has concluded that in order to hang onto his job, after his near-death experience in the July election, he must now appease the mad right of his party in every domain.
This is both bad policy and bad politics: on policy, the far right in Australia represent the worst of the xenophobic, nationalist and protectionist wave that we now see raging across Europe and America; while on politics, appeasement of political thugs like Abbott, Dutton, Abetz, Andrews and, depending on which way the wind is blowing, Morrison, only embolden the far right to demand more, not less.
This is what lies at the heart of Turnbull’s latest proposal to introduce laws that would ban someone from ever entering Australia under any visa category if that person had previously sought to enter by boat. This measure is about the politics of symbols, designed to throw red meat at the right, including the Hansonite insurgency, and to grovel to the broad politics of xenophobia. Turnbull, once an intelligent, global citizen, knows better.
True enough, Kevin, and MB supports more not less refugees. But the Turnbull move is also a bait and switch to allow Do-nothing Malcolm to persist with the increasingly damaging high immigration policy through the front door that is trailing you’re own “Big Australia” policy.
Until you repudiate that, Kevin, then the “xenophobes” will rise and rise.
