MysticalMachineGun posted:

If Bernardi leaves the Libs do they get to replace him in the Senate?

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

You want to post it? Behind a paywall.

quote:

The WA Nationals have preferenced the Greens ahead of their Liberal colleagues in two upper house regions, including putting the state’s agriculture minister Mark Lewis behind a sitting Greens legislative councillor.

The move will deepen a rift between the two Coalition partners who have clashed over the Liberal Party’s decision to do a “grubby” and “disgraceful” preference deal with One Nation to help Colin Barnett cling on to power in WA.

However, details of candidate voting tickets released by the WA Electoral Commission show that the Nationals have preferenced the Greens in the Mining and Pastoral region and the South West region ahead of the second Liberal on the ticket, in what appears to be a deal with the minor party to reciprocate.

In the South West region, the WA Nationals have preferenced three Shooters and Fishers candidates, the Liberal Democrats, Family First, the Australian Christians, and Green candidate Diane Evers, before preferencing the Liberals’ Wade De Campo, sitting member Robyn McSweeney and two other Liberal candidates.

In the Mining and Pastoral region, the Nationals have put Mr Lewis behind nine other minor party candidates, including a Green, despite him being in the Barnett government cabinet since last September.

The revelation will likely deepen the feud between the two coalition partners after National Party backbenchers stepped up the attack on the Liberals for its dealings with Pauline Hanson’s political juggernaut.

WA One Nation deal ‘disgraceful’

National Party backbenchers have attacked the Liberal Party over a preference deal between its West Australian branch and One Nation, labelling the move “pretty disgraceful” and potentially damaging for the country.

As a fight over Pauline Hanson’s swelling political power splits the Coalition and sparks claims of “grubby” Labor deals to trade preferences, outspoken Nationals MPs George Christensen and Andrew Broad told The Australian of their anger about the arrangement.

Mr Broad, a Victorian MP, urged his Liberal colleagues to “believe in” the Coalition.

“Our quest is always to do the right thing, not to do the thing that wins us seats,” he said.

“The Menzies Coalition, Fraser Coalition, Howard Coalition, Abbott Coalition, perhaps Turnbull Coalition has delivered Australia great government. It’s a model that works. Believe in it.

“If you want a coalition with One Nation the country would be poorer for it. The implications for the country are significant. We’d be a less tolerant country, we would be a country that doesn’t understand our trading partners … We would be a country that would be providing ineffective answers to difficult problems.”

Mr Broad also hit out at Liberal colleagues such as Industry Minister Arthur Sinodinos for describing One Nation as “a lot more sophisticated”, saying they should have a “drat good look” at the minor party’s policies and question if that is what they also stood for.

Mr Christensen, who tweeted over the weekend he wanted to remain in the Nats amid concern he might follow Cory Bernardi’s lead and defect from his party, said he hoped bad blood between the Liberals and Nationals in WA did not “spill over to the federal arena”.

“The Libs would rather see One Nation people in parliament than National Party people in WA. I could hazard a guess that’s not going to go down too well with the WA Nats,” Mr Christensen said.

“It’s pretty disgraceful that the WA Libs would not preference their Coalition partners ahead of another party. It just doesn’t make for a good working relationship in the future.”

But Mr Christensen said he believed the deal would “likely” be refined to Western Australian and not replicated elsewhere.

“I hope that federally they would be able to come to some amicable arrangements to ensure they’re preferencing each other rather than other parties,” he said.

West Australian Liberal senator Chris Back hit back at upset Nationals, saying the party’s state leader Brendon Grylls spent “some period of time” during the cliffhanger 2008 election “deciding whether to side” with Mr Barnett or then Labor premier Alan Carpenter.

“It’s a good move by the WA Liberal Party,” he said.

Under the deal, the Liberals will direct preferences to One Nation above the Nationals in the upper house — a move that has infuriated the Liberals’ traditional ally and junior Coalition partner. In exchange, One Nation has agreed to direct preferences to the Liberals above Labor in all 35 lower house seats the party will contest.

Barnaby Joyce has warned of ­retaliation over the WA deal as he met his federal colleagues last night to consider the threat to their party.

Social Services Minister and former Western Australian treasurer Christian Porter said the Liberal Party branch had said they would only preference One Nation above the Nationals in the upper house “in some districts”.

“(That) is actually something that the Nationals, themselves in WA, did exactly the same thing several elections ago,” he told ABC radio.

The senior WA Liberal MP said the relationship between the two parties in his home state was “unique” and the circumstances “idiosyncratic and different and unusual”.

“The relationship between the Nationals and the Liberals in WA is very, very different from the one that exists in every other jurisdiction in Australia. It’s not a single party, it’s not even a coalition,” Mr Porter said.

“The Nationals, as has been noted many times by Brendon Grylls, acts completely independently of the two major parties in the way in which it negotiates for government and they do what they do independently in the best interests, as they see it, of their constituents.”

quote:

“then of course tax increases become the only option”.

TF2 HAT MINING RIG posted:

The Liberal party will raise taxes and accept all the backlash so that the next government can have those sweet tax dollareedoos?

quote:

You lot. You spend all your time thinking about dying. Like you’re going to get killed by eggs or beef or global warming or asteroids. But you never take the time to imagine the impossible. That maybe you survive.

Ora Tzo posted:

Before I let you all continue squabbling on about Doctor Who lets all agree Blake's 7 was better.

ewe2 posted:

Turnbull's blaming the polls on Abbott and Shorten's going to fight the penalty rates cut ( to try and make the Greens invisible again)

I would blow Dane Cook posted: