The Australian has the news that former Canberra Raiders great Glenn Lazarus is running for a Queensland Senate seat as part of Clive Palmer’s team:
Billionaire Clive Palmer unveiled his party’s federal senate candidates in Brisbane today.
Lazarus, 47, the only player to win a rugby league premiership with three different clubs, will lead the team.
He played [...]

Over the past election cycle I have heard just about everything about what is going to happen to the APS, after the inevitable election of an Abbott Federal Government. In recent days Tony has said he will move APS jobs to regional areas, Big Joe has been saying for months that the coalition will cut [...]

The ABC’s Antony Green has a piece on electoral boundaries and redistributions, it seems those living on the Canberra/Fraser border could be in from some adjustment:
The ACT’s boundaries were gazetted in December 2005, so a redistribution fell due at the end of 2012. As the House of Representatives was due to expire within twelve months [...]

The Labor Party have announced their candidate for the seat of Hume in the upcoming election is one Michael Pilbrow:
Yass businessman and state finalist in the 2012 Australian of the Year awards, Michael Pilbrow, will run as the Labor Party candidate for the electorate of Hume in September’s Federal Election.
Mr Pilbrow’s endorsement as Labor’s Hume [...]

Liberal Senate candidate Zed Seselja is stamping his tiny feet at Green candidate Simon Sheikh over exactly how long Simon was in the Labor party before transitioning through “progressive activist” to Green:
Today’s edition of The Australian shows that there are serious conflicts between Mr Sheikh’s account of his previous Labor Party membership and Labor’s membership [...]

The Liberals’ Erica Betz is still getting over wrought by the idea of a progressive front organisation fund raising in much the same way as the numerous conservative front groups.
Particularly he wants to know about the Labor Party history of the Greens ACT Senate Candidate Simon Sheikh:
“Revelations in today’s Australian that Simon Sheikh was an [...]

The ABC reports that despite all the sound and fury of the Pogos* Zed Seselja still had the numbers the second time around for the winnable Senate seat in the ACT.
The Canberra Liberals, in the wake of this shambles are really going to have to extract their digits to hold out the Greens’ Simon Sheikh [...]

Not to be outdone by Labor’s ridiculous spill/no spill circus, the local Liberals have stepped forwards remind us that they are just as much a parody of a real political party by bringing in lawyers to settle this whole Zed Seselja versus Gary Humphries malarky.
For those who have blissfully avoided or managed to forget the [...]

The Canberra Times has an intriguing piece on the continuing warfare between the zeddites and the pogos for the soul of the Liberal Party in Canberra.
Madame Reid has finally succeeded in registering as a voting member.
But so too has the Great and Powerful Bob Winnell on a date which suggests the world is rather more [...]

Tomorrow night is the last chance for the pogos to get their voting rights up for the Liberal special council meeting – or as some are calling it Zeds last rites.
It will be interesting to see how many of Zeds thugs turn up to intimidate the elderly. I hear Gary has his own band [...]

Simon Sheikh was the only senate candidate I saw out and about the lake on Canberra Day (not saying that’s a scientific survey, just saying).
But Liberal head kicker the Tasmanian Senator Eric Abetz is kicking up a fuss over the former GetUp! founder being involved in GetUp! events while running for the Greens in the [...]

The ABC has bad news for the Zeddites:
But hundreds of members were barred from taking part in the vote and many are challenging the result.
They claim the process unfairly favoured Mr Seselja.
They successfully petitioned the Liberal Party Executive to agree to hold a vote on whether to overturn the preselection process and hold a [...]

The Canberra Times has a confused account of where the pre-selection War in Heaven (apparently conducted in the afterlife) for the Liberals Senate spot is up to.
Many Pogo* members excluded from voting by Zeddite manipulation (including Big Bob Winnel) have now got themselves some voting rights and it appears there will be another pre-selection vote.
Meanwhile [...]

We’ve long suspected that part of the Zeddites’ cunning plans have been to *not* turn up to meetings where Pogos might get themselves some preselection rights on the basis that if there isn’t a quorum the meeting doesn’t count.
(Here in the bunker we are sticklers for Robert’s Rules of Order and consider anyone taken [...]

The ABC has the unsurprising news that Senator Gary Humphries will take an opportunity if it comes his way:
A top level Liberal Party meeting will consider a motion to have the result set aside because of concerns that many members were denied a vote.
Senator Humphries was asked on Monday whether he would renominate if the [...]

Steven Bailey (KAP Senate candidate for the ACT), and Bruce (dog), are fleeing Canberra for a while in order to finish scoring an opera.
“it’ll be great to get back to the bush for some inspiration. I’ll go on a few motor bike rides and walks through the bush with my dog Bruce”
“I’ll shoot a few [...]

The ABC has the story on the expected pre-selection triumph of Zed Seselja in knocking over Senator Gary Humphries:
The ACT Liberal Party has dumped long-serving Senator Gary Humphries after a bitter preselection battle.
Former ACT Liberal leader Zed Seselja won today’s preselection vote 114 to 84 votes.
CityNews reports that Pogo* stalwart Gary Kent is planning to [...]

I just got an automated call from a company I’ve never heard of. They are doing a poll on people’s intentions for the next federal election.
By the sounds of it (“What is your personal opinion of Zed Seselja”), Zed’s team was paying for it.
Not really ‘Push polling’, but still pretty lame.
Is Zed that desperate? [...]

The saga of Steven Bailey’s Canberra candidacy for Katter’s Australian Party has taken another turn.
Moves within the party to expel Steven for thinking gay marriage wouldn’t be that bad have been rebuffed by the great man himself according to The Australian:
ACT Katter’s Australian Party (KAP) senate candidate Steve Bailey will not be disendorsed, the [...]

The ABC reports that new Liberal Leader Jeremy Hanson is backing his old boss (and the process to install him) in the race for Senate pre-selection.
It certainly would make things awkward in the party room if Zed were to fail in this tilt.

Political circles are getting very excited by the Canberra Times reporting on Tony Abbott’s remarks last night on the pre-selection race.
Bearing in mind that the Times is basically the Mouth Of Gazza at this point in the race Abbott’s remarks are not as clear cut as they at first appear:
Mr Abbott praised Senator Humphries’ political [...]

The Canberra Times has an intriguing story on Simon Corbell announcing to the Assembly that his Office of Regulatory Services is investigating the Canberra Liberals.
This is curious.
In the article the Liberals say they know nothing about this.
The ORS media release page has nothing on this at the time of writing.
So Simon is in special communication [...]

It’s a bit of a poser, Zed Seselja intends to draw a front bench Legislative Assembly salary to the last possible moment while running for the Senate (assuming he gets up in the pre-selection).
Should the Canberra community be indulging him in this?

Zed mooching around the Assembly to election day
Sure, why not
He really should [...]

Two moderately illuminating stories in the Canberra Times today on the Liberal Senate seat stoush.
The first is Gary Kent (former party president of the Gazza school) fulminating on all the things he coulda shoulda woulda gone and done, and still might if he had the numbers which he probably doesn’t.
This bit is worth repeating [...]

The National Time reports that Steven Bailey’s ACT senate run for Katter’s Australian Party has hit turbulence over gay marriage.
The 29-year-old composer and theatre director, Steven Bailey, told Fairfax Media that the party’s national director, Aidan McLindon, called him on Friday morning and asked him to reconsider both his position on gay marriage and his [...]

Crikey have had a poke at the Gary Humphries knifing.
It’s interesting to consider that at the Parliamentary level the conservative Zed is squeezing the numbers of the moderates.
The grip of the big-C Conservatives on the federal Coalition may be about to tighten, with moderate ACT Liberal Senator Gary Humphries likely to be rolled in a [...]

Word is breaking that Liberal Leader Zed Seselja has taken the easy option of knocking off sitting Senator Gary Humphries rather than taking the hard road of trying to win a new seat for his party.
We’ll let you know what this means for the Legislative Assembly when we know.

UPDATE 04/01/13 09:06: Word is that Zed [...]

The ABC brings word that Monday is the deadline for Liberal party nominations to run in this year’s federal election.
Which means Zed Seselja’s Hamlet act is drawing to a close.
Will he run at the lacklustre Gai Brodtmann in the southern electorate of Canberra?
Will he get into a preselection brawl with sitting Liberal Senator Gary Humphries?
Will [...]

Prime Minister Gillard has just taken the very unusual step of announcing the date of this year’s federal election.
It’s to be September 14 which will give our public servants something to be going on with.