Elsewhere:

• Tune in for live coverage tomorrow night as voters in three of Tasmania’s 15 Legislative Council districts go to the polls. Independent Ivan Dean, who was approached by John Howard to run in Bass at the 2004 federal election, faces a strong challenge from independent competitors in Windermere, which covers outer Launceston and the eastern side of the Tamar Valley. The retirement of independent Norma Jamieson has produced a tight four-horse race in the Devonport seat of Mersey, the field including Jamieson’s daughter Carolynn. Bartlett government Treasurer Michael Aird is unlikely to be troubled in his bid to keep Derwent (outer Hobart and Derwent Valley) as one of four upper house seats held by Labor. In the regrettably unlikely event that you wish to discuss this, please do so on the dedicated thread. Further reading from Peter Tucker at Tasmanian Politics. Further coverage tomorrow from Antony Green.

• Gary Clark, husband of former MP Jackie Kelly, has been found guilty for his role in the Lindsay pamphlet scandal. This was for the benign-sounding charge of “distributing unauthorised electoral material”, which carries a fine of $750. Former Liberal powerbroker Jeff Egan was acquitted, the court accepting his explanation that he was not aware of the content of the pamphlets. Not content with that, Egan has launched a private prosecution (presumably because his complaints have failed to interest the authorities) for assault against the Labor “possé” who caught the Liberal trio in their act, which includes Senator Steve Hutchins.

• Michelle Grattan of The Age reports that Josh Freydenberg has provided a formidable pair of referees in his application for the Liberals’ Kooyong preselection: John Howard and Andrew Peacock (the latter of whom held the seat from 1966 to 1994, in between Bob Menzies and Petro Georgiou).

• The Warrnambool Standard reports that Sarah Henderson, former host of The 7:30 Report and daughter of former state MP Ann Henderson, has entered the crowded field for the preselection in Corangamite. Others mentioned include former Kennett government minister Ian Smith; Graham Harris, head of the Liberals’ Corangamite electorate council; Victorian Farmers Federation president Simon Ramsay; “Internet expert and former Howard government adviser” Rod Nockles; Simon Price, unsuccessful Colac Otway Shire Council candidate and former electorate officer to Stewart McArthur; and Michael King, “Geelong businessman and owner of Kings Australia funeral services”.

• Peter Brent of Mumble comments on the audacity of Liberal Senator Michael Ronaldson expressing concern about the electoral roll in an excellent piece for Inside Story.

• After being reduced to the deadly third position on the Liberal ticket, conservative Tasmanian Senator Guy Barnett reportedly has his eyes on Bass, which Labor’s Jodie Campbell won from Michael Ferguson in 2007.

• If you thought Possum’s booth maps was dope, wait till you see Nathan Lambert’s Google Earth files.

• A comprehensively briefed Andrew Landeryou at VexNews explains the background to the Victorian Liberal Senate preselection vote to be held this Friday. Michael Ronaldson seems assured of retaining his top position, but Julian McGauran faces an uphill battle for third place against Ross Fox, a Peter Costello backer. The second place is reserved for the Nationals.

• Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald reports on a NSW Liberal state executive ruling that new members in Bradfield will not be eligible to vote in the preselection to replace Brendan Nelson, to be held in nine months. Normally party rules require membership for six months for eligibility, but that would be an invitation to mass branch stacking in the current circumstances. Coorey also weighs in on recent shenanigans in the Perth seat of Tangney.

• Tasmanian LHMWU secretary David O’Byrne has confirmed he will seek preselection as a candidate for Franklin at next year’s state election. O’Byrne is a former state party president and brother of Bass MP Michelle O’Byrne. Among the Liberal candidates will be Vanessa Goodwin, who narrowly failed to defeat the now-departed Paula Wreidt at the 2006 election.

• The silly season endeth – Kerry O’Brien and Lateline are back, and parliaments federal, Victorian and South Australian resume today.

• The Australian Workers Union has released a comprehensive survey of workers’ attitudes to the global financial crisis, derived from 1016 interviews conducted by Auspoll. The headline finding is that 40 per cent fear losing their jobs in the next year.

• Parties’ disclosures of receipts, expenditure and debts are available for perusal at the Australian Electoral Commission, at least so far as donations of over $10,500 are concerned. Siobhain Ryan and Imre Salusinszky of The Australian and Bernard Keane of Crikey sift through the evidence; the latter also opens fire on the Coalition over its obstruction of legislation reversing the 2005 disclosure threshold hike. Keane notes that one travesty can’t be pinned on the previous government: that we have had to wait until February 2009 to find out what went on at an election held in November 2007. Anyone who imagines this has something to do with logistics should consider the practice in New York City, where donations have to be declared before election day and “made public immediately on a searchable, online database”.

• Antony Green returns from a fortnight in the wilderness (literally) with a belated post-mortem on the Liberals’ defeat in South Australia’s Frome by-election. As I suspected, independent Geoff Brock owes his win to a peculiarity of the state’s electoral system that saves ballot papers with incomplete preferences by assigning them the preferences officially lodged by their favoured candidate. Without this provision, 258 ballots that were thus admitted the day after polling day would have been informal, leaving Brock 38 votes behind Labor at the second last count rather than 30 votes ahead. Another issue has been brought to my attention by Kevin Bonham, who points to the fact that a certain number of Liberal voters harmed their candidate’s chances by voting Liberal rather than Labor. If 31 such voters had tactically switched to Labor, Brock would have been excluded and the distribution of his preferences would have given victory to Liberal candidate Terry Boylan. Public choice theorists call this flaw in preferential voting “non-monotonicity”, which is elaborated upon here (although Bonham reckons “some of their worked examples are wrong”).

• Antony also gets in early with a preview of Western Australia’s May 18 daylight saving referendum, which combines customary psephological insight with a keen eye for the state’s lifestyle peculiarities.

• Former Labor MLA Kathryn Hay will run as an independent for the Tasmanian upper house division of Windermere (extending from the outskirts of Launceston north to the proposed site of Gunns’ Bell Bay pulp mill), challenging independent incumbent Ivan Dean at the poll likely to be held on May 2. Peter Tucker at Tasmanian Politics reports that one of the the other two seats up for election, the Devonport-based division of Mersey, looms as a clash between Latrobe mayor Mike Gaffney and Devonport mayor Lyn Laycock. Mersey is being vacated by retiring independent Norma Jamieson.

• Staying in Tasmania, a recount has confirmed that the last remaining Labor candidate in Franklin from the 2006 election, Daniel Hulme, will assume the lower house seat vacated by former Tourism Minister Paula Wriedt.

• Mining magnate and former National Party director Clive Palmer is making himself visible as the Queensland state election approaches, having been profiled last week on The 7.30 Report and in a cover story for The Weekend Australian Magazine. The latest salvo in Palmer’s charm offensive is a demand of $1 million in damages for defamation from Anna Bligh, who said there was “something just not right about one billionaire owning their own political party” (the annual financial disclosures discussed previously list $600,000 in donations from Palmer to the Liberal and National parties). Sean Parnell’s Weekend Australian piece describes Palmer as a “notorious litigant”, who “once listed it as a hobby in his Who’s Who entry”. Palmer’s 18-year-old son Michael has been preselected as the Liberal National Party candidate for the safe Labor seat of Nudgee.

• Rick Wallace of The Australian reports that Nationals-turned-Liberal Senator Julian McGauran will face a number of challengers in his bid for one of the two safe seats on the Victorian Senate ticket, with other incumbent Michael Ronaldson “widely expected to claim top spot”. The field includes prominent Peter Costello supporter Ross Fox, barrister Caroline Kenny and solicitor Cate Dealehr. Other names mentioned by Andrew Landeryou’s VexNews are Terry Barnes, a “former Tony Abbott adviser”, and Owen Lysaght, who ran as an independent in Chisholm in 2004.