I know I’m a bit late to the party on the first bit of news but in the last few weeks we have bid adieu to a Premier and NT Chief Minister. The Queensland Premier now is Steven Miles who has tried to do a hard reset for a Government that is almost 9 years old and is trailing an uninspired but at least not incompetent Opposition. Meanwhile the NT Chief Minister Natasha Fyles fell on her sword yesterday after some controversies over share holdings in a Gas Company that she refused to investigate into the health effects of and shortly after she announced she would divest her shares in Woodside another Gas Company. This is the reason she gave…… it had nothing to do apparently with the disaster NT Territory Polls which showed Labor at 19.7! percent primary poll over 20 points behind the Country Liberal Party who were 40.3%. Meanwhile over in the USA in some breaking news Colorado have announced that Donald Trump can’t be on the Colorado Primary ballot because of his alleged role in the Capitol Hill Insurrection which is the only real way a President can be precluded from running for office again. This comes in the wake of the controversy also in the last few days of the Mass Deportation of Muslims the largest program in history that Donald Trump pledged to implement which immediately ran comparisons to Nazi Germany. So in this blog I will talk about Queensland and NT Politics before discussing the latest in the Donald Trump saga.
So first too Queensland Politics and Steven Miles swore in his new cabinet yesterday as part of a hard reset to keep Labor in Power in Queensland after a messy last year. To give some context on what that mess was, you had the famously contentious Detention laws which were designed to keep young offenders detained indefinitely which included Child offenders. That went down like a lead balloon with the Other parties for being too draconian although as I said at the time the LNP probably wished they could do the same thing secretly. The biggest change to the Ministry was the giving of three Portfolio roles to Meghan Scanlon to create a super Housing Portfolio. That’s a big move because along with crime in the Northern Parts of the State particularly, Housing and Cost of Living are seen as the other weak points of the Labor Party. The Labor Party also now have a By-Election in the seat of Inala to contend with although I don’t see any problems for the Labor Party there. The reason I don’t see a problem in that seat is due to the fact that the seat of Inala was one of the seven seats Labor held in the 2012 election wipeout. The Polls for the State of Queensland have all seen a consistent lead for the LNP since the middle of this year albeit mostly by a small enough margin that it could be turned around. With the Federal Drag of the Labor Party in power federally now though, I can see this being a difficult next state election for the Labor Party. The main advantage the Labor Party have is that their not the LNP though which still have the tainted brush of Campbell Newman on their record.
Now onto NT Politics and the Labor Party are a mess over there. They have the major issue of being forever struggling Economically, Darwin is overly reliant on the Public Service, They have a near on permanent crime issue in the big cities particularly in Alice Springs and they have the major issue of the division from the failed Voice to Parliament Referendum Result where the big towns/cities voted no overwhelmingly while the Remote Indigenous Communities voted Yes. You also had that poll I referenced earlier which showed NT Labor both at a Territory and Federal level in dire straits. As I said that poll had Labor at 19.7% to the Country Liberal Party 40.3% and if repeated at a Territory level would see Labor wiped out of the Territory. This is interesting poll wise because it goes contrary to the fact that in the most recent by-election Labor got a swing to it, with the by-election in Arafura resulting in a swing to Labor of nearly 18% primary and close to 15.5% 2PP. I think it goes to show a few things in NT Politics, firstly results are wildly volatile and can swing wildly from election to election, secondly a good candidate in the NT Election is huge because name recognition means a lot more in the smaller electorates and lastly Polling in the NT is hard to be reliable due to the large remote communities that are hard to poll. That all being said you’d still rather be in the Country Liberal Parties shoes right now, as those four issues of Indigenous Reconciliation, Cost of Living, Crime and Energy really is hitting the Labor Party hard currently. Add to that now is Natasha Fyles resigning who has had two big scandals in a few weeks on shares and the conflicts of interest they have with some of her policy decisions. The one that really broke the camels back was the finding that Fyles had shares in a company that she had refused to do a health check into the dangers the mine caused. Add to that the shares she had to divest in from Woodside and also the recent polling numbers and her leadership was always terminal. Unfortunately for Natasha Fyles she had the unenviable task of following a highly popular leader in Michael Gunner who had led the territory well during Covid-19. The candidates in the running to replace Fyles are Nicole Manison and also Eva Lawler. This would be the third Chief Minister since Labor were re-elected in 2020.
Finally in USA Politics and Donald Trump has again given me more fodder for my Political Blog. This time it is for two reasons, first is the Colorado decision to not allow Trump on the Colorado Primary Ballot, and the second was his plans for the largest ever deportation scheme to deport Muslims on mass from the Country. All this comes in the background of the first Republican Primary Ballot in Iowa coming in less than a month away. So Colorado with its Democratic majority Law Makers voted 4-3 against the former President to bar him from running in the state of Colorado in the Republican Primary that is scheduled to take place on Super Tuesday on March 5th. Now this is due to the little used Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution which is meant to bar people who have committed an insurrection for running for an office of Government. Now this was originally meant to be used to ban Rebels from the American Civil War from running for Government after the War ended but has never actually been successfully argued before, until now obviously. Now I fully expect this to be appealed at the Supreme Court and I expect it will probably overturned due to the Conservative leaning of the Supreme Court but a few counts to make on this. Firstly it sets the precedent for other states where similar filings have already been made to do the same thing and secondly it further muddies the water for Former President Trump in regards to his legal woes. This is on top of the Former President at a rally a few days ago saying America would have to implement the largest Deportation of Americans in history with a particular bent on deporting Muslim “Illegal” Immigrants. This is a dangerous new low for the Former President and it was immediately compared to the 1930’s and the actions of Adolf Hitler with Jewish people. Unfortunately it says a lot about the current state of the world that this did not come as a surprise to me, indeed several of the Republican Primary Candidates have promised something similar albeit not as explicitly as Trump now has. You’d think with all of these controversies that Biden would be sailing along merrily in the polls but no, if anything Trump has opened a wider lead Nationally over Biden in polling released in the last week. At a primary level its an even bleaker story for the Anti-Trumpers with Trump holding now a 55% lead nationally over his competitors and a growing lead in the early states.
Thanks for reading my blog, unless more crazy shit happens, I will now take a few weeks off blogging Politics in the Christmas and New Year Break but I will be back early next year to preview the Iowa Republican Primary Race.
Political Musings from the Man Down Under 