What’s more:

• George Megalogenis of The Australian charts the rise of the centre left with reference to long-term Newspoll trends.

• Glenn Milne of The Australian has written a skeptically received article which speaks of plotting against Julie Bishop partly motivated by Senator Matthias Cormann’s designs on her blue-ribbon seat of Curtin. Andrew Bolt has published Cormann’s denial.

• Electoral Commissioner Ed Killesteyn advises the government to get hip by allowing voters to enrol online.

• Rick Wallace of The Australian notes the Victorian ALP is struggling to meet its affirmative action quota of 35 per cent female candidates in winnable seats, making it “almost imperative that a woman replaces a retiring woman, and that at least one in two of all retiring men are replaced by women”. While little action is expected ahead of the next federal election, speculation is said to surround the state seats of Craig Langdon (Ivanhoe), Peter Batchelor (Thomastown), Lynne Kosky (Altona) and John Pandazopoulos (Dandenong). More substantially, “former speaker Judy Maddigan has confirmed she will retire and she is expected to support former Labor staffer Natalie Sykes-Hutchins to replace her in the seat of Essendon”.

• Adelaide’s Independent Weekly reports on Malcolm Mackerras’s tip for next year’s state election: Labor to be comfortably returned, with the loss of only Norwood, Mawson and Light. The report notes something I had neglected to relate previously: SA Murray Irrigators Association chair Tim Whetstone was preselected in November as the Liberal candidate for Nationals MP Karlene Maywald’s seat of Chaffey, ahead of Citrus Growers of SA president Mark Chown and businessman Brian Barnett. Mackerras tips Whetstone to win.

• Ben Raue at The Tally Room has a post on whether the federal parliament should be enlarged, with reference to international practice.

• Possum notes the cubic polynomial distribution of two-party electorate results, and its implications for interpreting marginal seat exit polls.

Courtesy of the April edition of the invaluable Democratic Audit Update:

• The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters will hold a “roundtable public hearing” on submissions to the green paper on campaign finance at Parliament House on Thursday, from 9.30am to 1pm.

• The Greens’ “parliamentary contract” with Labor’s minority government in the Australian Capital Territory is reviewed by Jenny Stewart in the Canberra Times.

• Brian Costar examines Electoral Commissioner Ed Killesteyn’s demolition of the spurious justifications for the Howard government’s 2005 electoral “reforms” at Inside Story.

• The Australian Parliamentary Library has published a research paper on the electoral demise of the Australian Democrats by Cathy Madden.

• Amid lingering rumours of a late February state election in Queensland, Lawrence Springborg has floated the possibility of Mal Brough entering state politics by contesting a Labor-held seat. Such would be the only option available to him given the Liberal National Party merger arrangement which guaranteed all sitting members uncontested preselections. Party sources quoted by Mark Bahnisch in Crikey “rule out any possibility that the Borg has seriously approached Brough. It would appear instead that the LNP’s polling suggests continued weakness and scepticism among urban and outer suburban Liberal voters – whose support the opposition desperately needs to be within even a mile of toppling Bligh.”

• The new Electoral Commissioner, Ed Killesteyn, began his five-year term on Monday. Killesteyn has almost swapped roles with his predecessor Ian Campbell, who is now secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs – of which Killesteyn was previously a deputy secretary.

• UMR Research has published one of its occasional surveys on attitudes to republicanism, which shows both support and opposition losing ground to “don’t know” over the past six months. Other findings are that “men and younger Australians (are) more in favour of a republic”, and that support for an elected president remains overwhelming.

• Only one week to go until South Australia’s Frome by-election, which you can read about and comment on here. Despite a preference swap between independent Port Pirie mayor Geoff Brock and Nationals candidate Neville Watson, there seems little reason not to think Terry Boylan will easily retain the seat for the Liberals.

• Dig Wikipedia’s animation showing the evolution of Australia’s state and territory borders (hat tip to VexNews).

NOTE: No further discussion on the situation in the Middle East, please. There are plenty of more appropriate places for it elsewhere.