Wake up Zed?

LSWCHP said :

CraigT said :

caf said :

One thing we can certainly say is that Zed has repeated his dubious result from the 2008 ACT elections of taking the Liberals backwards at an election in which Labor also went backwards.

I’m wondering if anybody here can explain the inner workings of the libs in terms of –
– Who chose Zed
– How Zed was chosen
– Why Zed was chosen

Some things are beyond the ken of mere mortals who don’t belong to political parties, and that last question is one of them. Why indeed?

The only thing that I can recall about Zed’s entire political career in the ACT is that he has had problems with running his office. Questions about timesheets, and use of government money for party purposes.

Apart from that, what has the guy done? Seriously, is there anybody out there who can enlighten me as to what Mr Seselja has achieved during his time in politics?

He was instrumental in scotching the building of a gas-fired power station next to the tip – a project that would have provided many jobs and a more secure electricity supply to the ACT.

So if the seat has become marginal does that mean we might be in line for some Federal government funding for projects to try and sway us?

If so, then way to go Zed!

This would have to be the ultimate lose, lose situation for the Libs. If Humphries had remained the candidate the Libs would have scored a quota easily on first preference votes. There was a 1.2% swing to the Libs in the ACT and Lundy had to go to preferences – the first time the Labor senate seat has had to go to preferences. Zed muscling in was seen as a betrayal of the people of Tuggeranong and south Woden who voted for him in huge numbers and came within a handful of votes of making him chief minister in last year’s ACT election.

Zed has left the Assembly and has left the opposition in the ACT floundering. That huge following in the “deep south” has disappeared and Hanson is seen as just another politician from the north. More importantly, Zed hasn’t been able to transfer that local and state vote to federal politics. The bitter preselection row has caused his halo to disappear. If Zed had remained in the Assembly he would have been chief minister in three years.

Zed in the Senate election was up against a blow-in from interstate masquerading as a local standing for The Greens at the worst possible time after Bob Brown had retired and with the Green vote nationwide dropping by more than a quarter since the 2010 election. There was also a big swing against The Greens in the ACT yet the seat might still go to Sheikh. And Sheikh managed to boost the Green vote in Tuggeranong to the same level as the rest of the ACT.

I think this should be a lesson to local politicians about the unique political dynamic in the ACT between federal, state and local politics. Moreover Zed and the Liberals can look forward to many more knife-edge results in the future. What should be a lay down misere for the Liberals under the Abbott government has now become ultra marginal, not because of political trends but because of Zed’s ego.

CraigT said :

caf said :

One thing we can certainly say is that Zed has repeated his dubious result from the 2008 ACT elections of taking the Liberals backwards at an election in which Labor also went backwards.

I’m wondering if anybody here can explain the inner workings of the libs in terms of –
– Who chose Zed
– How Zed was chosen
– Why Zed was chosen

In November 2012 the CT reported that Zed was being urged by Liberal insiders to challenge Gary Humphries for the Senate spot and that he would have the numbers to win. Zed said something along the lines of he had no plans to run. The party’s management committee scheduled the close of nominations for the Federal election in early February 2013. On the day that nominations closed Zed held a press conference and said that he was challenging. It seemed that all hell broke loose from that point.

Members of the party with voting rights get to vote for the candidates they want, but from the various reports it seemed that there were many party members without voting rights, not having attended a qualifying meeting within the required timeframe. With the ACT election in October it seemed that the number of ordinary meetings may have been less than normal. It also sounded as though Zed got his supporters in the party to attend meetings in January that they wouldn’t have ordinarily gone to in order to ensure they had voting rights. At the same time, Gary Humphries’ supporters were working on the assumption that Zed hadn’t changed his position from his last public statements and they didn’t have a need to attend meetings they wouldn’t ordinarily attend. When the pre-selection meeting was held, Zed won the vote.

There was a challenge to the validity of the pre-selection process and a lot or argy bargy in the lead up to the meeting where that challenge was debated. The decision of the membership, which at that point included many people who hadn’t been able to vote in the original pre-selection, was to uphold the pre-selection process, so Zed was confirmed as the Senate candidate.

Overall I found the way that Zed challenged to be dishonest and showed a lack of respect for the membership of his own party, and so voted under the line with the number 2 Liberal Senate candidate getting my first preference.

As to why Zed was chosen, I’m not sure that was reported in the media but what I heard was that he claimed that he would make the Senate seat safe so that in future elections the party could put in a bigger effort to try and win the lower house seats. I suspect it was also partially to do with getting rid of a moderate liberal and replacing him with someone who is very conservative. The Senate vote doesn’t appear to have substantially changed and depending on how many under the line votes there are it’s still possible, but unlikely, that the Greens will win it, so he’s completely failed in making the seat safer. In fact with a Coalition government now in power there’s a good chance of a swing against the Liberals in the ACT at the next federal election, meaning that the Greens will put in another big effort then and may be successful at that time.

It is often said that politics is the refuge of those who cannot achieve in other fields. They don’t achieve there either other than to occupy a seat that could have been occupied by someone who could have made a meaninful contribution.
I know that Gary Humphries was not the ACT Senator in 1996, he was ACT Attorney General, but I do remember accusing fingers being pointed at him for not speaking out against and even supporting Howard’s mass sackings that put Canberra into deep- recession. http://workers.labor.net.au/233/print_index.html
” The excitement machine raised eyebrows in the nation’s capital when he threw his insubstantial weight behind Peter Costello’s claim that the best thing that ever happened to Canberra was the Liberal Government sacking 17,000 of its citizens.
No doubt they are far better off now that they no longer have to bother about paying a mortgage, collecting a pay packet or contributing to their country.”

CraigT said :

caf said :

One thing we can certainly say is that Zed has repeated his dubious result from the 2008 ACT elections of taking the Liberals backwards at an election in which Labor also went backwards.

I’m wondering if anybody here can explain the inner workings of the libs in terms of –
– Who chose Zed
– How Zed was chosen
– Why Zed was chosen

Some things are beyond the ken of mere mortals who don’t belong to political parties, and that last question is one of them. Why indeed?

The only thing that I can recall about Zed’s entire political career in the ACT is that he has had problems with running his office. Questions about timesheets, and use of government money for party purposes.

Apart from that, what has the guy done? Seriously, is there anybody out there who can enlighten me as to what Mr Seselja has achieved during his time in politics?

And of course Zed, if elected to the Senate, will just roll over and let Tony Abbott tickle his tummy while thousands of Canberran public servants fall foul of sackings by “natural attrition”, just like Gary Humphries did in ’96. Not a word of protest will be heard.
Natural attrition is when you voluntarily leave your job with a department by resigning, retiring or death. Natural Attrition under the Libs will be your department leaving you. What could be more natural.

caf said :

One thing we can certainly say is that Zed has repeated his dubious result from the 2008 ACT elections of taking the Liberals backwards at an election in which Labor also went backwards.

I’m wondering if anybody here can explain the inner workings of the libs in terms of –
– Who chose Zed
– How Zed was chosen
– Why Zed was chosen

A shaft of gold when all about is darkness.

IrishPete said :

Holden Caulfield said :

Sadly it looks like he’s going to have the last laugh.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2013/results/senate/act/

Loved the video.

The joke may be spreading, because the online CT article today http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/seselja-in-tight-contest-with-sheikh-for-second-seat-20130907-2td1e.html says “Mr Seselja was not available for comment”. What IS he doing? Is it the Liberal “small-target” approach?

But you might be jumping the gun with the ABC analysis. It shows Seselja elected largely based on the final allocation of Animal Justice party preferences. So that means the ABC is assuming that AJP voters have voted above the line. It won’t take many to have voted below the line, preferencing Greens over Liberals, for the ABC count to be wrong. Same goes for some of the earlier preference allocations, but they’re less easy to guess about.

IP

Ultimately the only preferences Zed is receiving in the indicative count are Animal Justice Party, Rise Up Australia and one third of the Stable Population Party. The rest are going to Simon.

While you’re right that there is bound to be quite a bit of leakage benefitting Simon from below-the-line AJP voters, there’s also likely to be some leakage the other way from below-the-line PUP and KAP voters benefitting Zed. We won’t know the result until the data-entry of below-the-line ballots is done. It will be close, but I suspect Zed has squeaked in, and it will be principally due to preferences from the AJP group voting ticket.

One thing we can certainly say is that Zed has repeated his dubious result from the 2008 ACT elections of taking the Liberals backwards at an election in which Labor also went backwards.