• Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald reports on the state of play after the redistribution proposal abolishing Laurie Ferguson’s Sydney seat of Reid:

There was a rumour he was eyeing Parramatta under a plan which would see the incumbent in that seat, Julie Owens, move to Greenway, a Liberal seat which is assuredly Labor thanks to the redistribution. For various reasons, that scenario is not going to fly. More solid is a plan, backed by Ferguson and his support group in the Left, for him to move to the western suburbs seat of Fowler. It is held by Julia Irwin but it is anticipated she will retire at the election. Irwin belongs to the Right but the Left controls the branches in Fowler and wants the seat back. Ferguson, however, faces resistance to getting any seat at all, and that includes from elements of his own faction. “How do you think we would look in terms of renewal?” said one powerbroker. Left kingmakers are leaning towards the Liverpool Mayor, Wendy Waller, for Fowler. The Right is pushing Ed Husic, who ran for Greenway in 2004 but was the victim of a race-hate letterbox campaign … Ultimately Rudd has the final say, a power the Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull, could only dream of given the looming preselection fights among NSW Liberals. But it is a power that needs to be used wisely, sparingly and sensitively. “Kevin should not be unfavourable to Laurie,” warned a Ferguson friend, claiming Ferguson had helped Rudd win the leadership.

• Very soon after the previous report appeared, it emerged the NSW Liberal Party was changing its rules to allow, as Imre Salusinszky of The Australian describes it, a three-quarter majority of the state executive to “rapidly endorse a candidate on the recommendation of the state director and with the go-ahead of the state president and the party’s state and federal parliamentary leaders”. The rules are ostensibly designed for by-elections or snap double dissolutions, but can essentially be used at the leaders’ pleasure. This places the party on a similar footing to Labor, whose national executive granted sweeping federal preselection powers to Kevin Rudd and five party powerbrokers earlier this year. The most obvious interpretation of the Liberal move is that it’s an attempt to stymie the influence of the hard right in party branches, and Salusinszky indeed reports the reform is expected to be opposed by “a large part of the Right faction”. However, the Labor parallel demonstrates it can equally be seen as part of a broader trend to centralisation necessitated by the ongoing decline in membership and resulting opportunities for branch-stacking.

• From the previously cited Phillip Coorey article, Nathan Rees’s chief-of-staff Graeme Wedderburn is said to be assured of a winnable position on the Senate ticket at the next election: second if Steve Hutchins retires, third at the expense of incumbent Michael Forshaw if he doesn’t. “Unless, of course, he can be persuaded to enter state politics, which is another option being floated.”

• Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald (again) notes that South Australian Senator Cory Bernardi is causing angst by agreeing to appear at a hard-right fundraiser in Cook, where federal member Scott Morrison continues to battle the forces that initially delivered preselection to factional operative Michael Towke before the 2007 election.

• The ABC reports that Tony Crook, Goldfields pastoralist and candidate for Kalgoorlie at the 2008 state election, has been “recruited” to stand as Nationals candidate against Wilson Tuckey in O’Connor. In response to a reader’s email, I recently had occasion to transpose the state election booth results on the new federal boundaries. In O’Connor, the Nationals would have polled 38.0 per cent to the Liberals’ 25.3 per cent and Labor’s 20.7 per cent. In Durack (successor to Barry Haase’s seat of Kalgoorlie), it was Labor 29.2 per cent, Liberal 29.7 per cent and Nationals 28.5 per cent. It should be noted that these numbers are heavily distorted by the presence of sitting Nationals members at state level, as well as the impact of state issues like Royalties for Regions and one-vote, one-value. The Nationals’ federal campaign in Western Australia will be bankrolled by litigious Queensland mining billionaire Clive Palmer, with the stated objective of gaining a Senate seat.

• There is increasing talk that former NSW Opposition Leader Peter Debnam will vacate his seat of Vaucluse at the next election. He faces multiple preselection challenges in any case, the apparent front-runner being University of NSW deputy chancellor Gabrielle Upton. Local paper the Wentworth Courier has taken aim at Debnam with an article and accompanying vox pop on his parliamentary inactivity during the current term.

• Sonia Byrnes of the Cooma-Monaro Express reports that Queanbeyan councillor John Barilaro will nominate for Nationals preselection in the state seat of Monaro, which the party has won the right to contest without challenge from the Liberals. Labor’s Steve Whan holds the seat by 6.3 per cent.

• Commenter Hamish Coffee relates that a local newspaper has Clover Moore dismissing rumours she won’t seek another term as state member for Sydney.

• Ben Raue at The Tally Room reports that the South Australian Greens are conducting their preselection for the Legislative Council ticket at next year’s state election. The candidates are Carol Vincent, who as SA Farmers Federation chief executive offers an unusual pedigree for a Greens candidate; Tammy Jennings, one-time Democrat and current convenor of the state party; former convenor and unsuccessful 1997 lead candidate Paul Petit; and the apparently little-known Mark Andrew. At stake is a very likely seat for the first candidate, and an outside chance for the second.

• The Sydney Morning Herald has carried a piece from NSW Liberal leader Barry O’Farrell outlining the party’s position on campaign finance reform: caps on spending extending to third parties, caps on donations and bans on donations from other than individual citizens, tighter regulation of lobbyists and extension of Independent Commission Against Corruption powers to cover the nexus between donations and government decisions.

• Mumble man Peter Brent gives the once-over to the recent Essential Research survey on which leader is best equipped to handle “issues of national importance”, noting how much these questions are influenced by incumbency.

Courtesy of the latest Democratic Audit of Australia update:

• Last month’s Audit seminar on campaign finance, Dollars and Democracy: How Best to Regulate Money in Australian Politics, will be the subject of tonight’s episode of The National Interest on Radio National from 6pm. A fortnight ago, Electoral Commissioner Ed Killesteyn appeared on the program discussing enrolment procedures and electoral boundaries.

• The Audit’s submission to the Victorian Electoral Matters Committee inquiry into the Kororoit by-election gets it right on proposals to tighten laws on misleading campaign advertising, namely that the cure would be worse than the disease.

• Brian Costar discusses campaign finance reform on Meet the Press.

• The Queensland Government has published its green paper on “a range of topics including political donations and fundraising, lobbying, whistleblowing and pecuniary interest registers”.

• Norm Kelly argues the merits of a ban on overseas donations in Australian Policy Online.

• Greg Roberts of The Australian reports on the demise of a Queensland Coalition deal in which Barnaby Joyce was to move to the lower house and Liberal Senator Russell Trood was to maintain the existing balance in the Senate by joining the Nationals. The Liberals’ end of the deal was reportedly vetoed by federal Liberal president Alan Stockdale, prompting Joyce to angrily declare he would not be moving from the Senate. Trood’s factional ally, former state Liberal president Bob Carroll, says he would stake his life on Trood never agreeing to sit in the Nationals rather than the Liberal party room. This would seem to be a pretty big call, given that Trood’s alternative is to stay in the surely unwinnable fourth position on the Liberal National ticket.

• Fans of factional argybargy can unearth a motherlode of detail on Labor’s western Melbourne fiefdoms from the Victorian Ombudsman’s report into Brimbank City Council. Among the matters examined is the highly fraught preselection for last year’s Kororoit by-election, with the Ombudsman recommending an investigation into a possible breach of the Local Government Act by failed aspirant and former mayor Natalie Suleyman. It is alleged that a funding decision for a sports ground redevelopment was influenced by a desire to win the support of Keilor MP and Right powerbroker George Seitz, and that efforts were made to withdraw the funding when Seitz failed to come through.

• Peter Kennedy of the ABC notes that preselection nominations for federal Liberal seats in WA close in less than three weeks, so those gunning for the removal of Pearce MP Judi Moylan and O’Connor MP Wilson Tuckey don’t have long to get their act together. Matt Brown tells Kennedy he hasn’t made up his mind whether to launch a second challenge against Dennis Jensen in Tangney, although jockeying in local branches suggests otherwise.

• Bernard Keane of Crikey reports that Bronwyn Bishop’s hold on the larger branches in her electorate of Mackellar has “slipped”. One of the potential challengers, believe it or not, is former state Opposition Leader John Brogden. Another is a blast from an even more distant past – Jim Longley, who preceded Brogden as member for the local state seat of Pittwater.

• Western Australia’s minority Liberal-National government lost a vote in the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday, which I believe to be the first defeat for a government there in 17 years. At issue was a highly contentious bill to replace preferential voting at local government elections with first-past-the-post. However, the defeat resulted from the absence of four ministers from the chamber, and the bill was passed on a second attempt later in the day. The subject of the bill itself is obviously worth discussion, which I will attend to eventually. For whatever reason, the seemingly retrograde measure has the support of the Western Australian Local Government Association.

• A report by the Youth Electoral Study for the Australian Electoral Commission finds 20 per cent of youths aged 18 to 25 are not enrolled to vote, and “close to half” wouldn’t vote if it wasn’t compulsory. Those who went to private schools or were subjected to civics classes were somewhat more enthusiastic.

• You might recall some chat last month about a looming referendum on the introduction of a Hare-Clark style electoral system in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Well, that’s happening on Tuesday.

• Possum’s favourite word, “spiffy”, doesn’t do justice to his infographic electoral demographic displays.

• If it’s analysis of major party submissions for the federal redistribution in New South Wales you’re after, Ben Raue of The Tally Room is unequivocally your man.

UPDATE: Graphic here (how long have they been waiting to use that photo of Kevin Rudd?). Interesting supplementary question on what the government should have done with the stimulus package money – 78 per cent say they would have preferred it be spent on infrastructure, which is the kind of opinion poll response political operatives hesitate to believe. Opinion is divided on whether promised tax cuts should go ahead as planned.

Other news:

• Essential Research has Labor’s two-party lead nudging downwards for the fourth week in a row. It’s now at 57-43, compared with 63-37 on April 6. The survey also reveals slightly more optimism on the economy than was recorded in mid-March, mixed messages on what should be done in the budget, a persistence of illiberal attitudes towards asylum seekers, and a widespread belief that Pacific nations such as Fiji should be “left to sort out their own affairs”.

• An anonymous business figure tells Glenn Milne of The Australian that “major business donors” have a hit list of 14 MPs who must make way for new blood if the Liberal Party is to get their donations. These are Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar) and Philip Ruddock (Berowra), Kevin Andrews (Menzies), Alby Schultz (Hume), Joanna Gash (Gilmore), Judi Moylan (Pearce), Wilson Tuckey (O’Connor), Margaret May (McPherson), Andrew Laming (Bowman), Michael Johnson (Ryan) and Alex Somlyay (Fairfax), along with Nationals John Forrest (Mallee) and Bruce Scott (Maranoa) plus one lone Senator, former Howard numbers man Bill Heffernan. Some of these point to the Coalition’s undoubted surplus of MPs past their use-by date, as noted in detail recently by Peter van Onselen in The Australian. Others on the list fall well below van Onselen’s nominated cut-off point of 60 years of age, the most striking examples being Johnson (39) and Laming (42). Milne’s source also reckons Barnaby Joyce is “divisive and not a team player or a regional centre vote winner” – the latter judgement at least seems a very big call. While Milne describes the list as “non-factional”, Liberal sources are evidently putting it to Andrew Bolt that responsibility for the article ultimately lies with party treasurer and Turnbull ally Michael Yabsley, who scores an indirect compliment from Milne’s source.

• Submissions for the redistribution of New South Wales federal elections have been published, compelling the major parties to suggest which electorate they think should be eliminated. The Liberals have excitingly decided the axe should be wielded on their own turf, suggesting Kay Hull’s seat of Riverina and Alby Schultz’s seat of Hume be merged into a new seat called Bradman. Schultz has reacted by calling for a return to rural malapportionment. Ben Raue notes that the Liberals want territory transferred from Wentworth to Sydney, which would at once make Malcolm Turnbull safer while leaving Tanya Plibersek more vulnerable to the Greens. Labor’s submission calls for the abolition of Pat Farmer’s seat of Macarthur further to the north, where the Liberals propose to strengthen their position by adding territory from Hume.

• Swoon over the new-look Crikey. Now no longer featuring my goofy 2004 vintage mug on the front page, praise the Lord.

Elsewhere:

• The Central Midlands & Coastal Advocate reports that Liberal Kalgoorlie MP Barry Haase has been making himself known in the areas of O’Connor which will be in the new seat of Durack under the radically redrawn boundaries. Despite being 75 years old, Wilson Tuckey has reportedly been taking an interest in the city of Kalgoorlie, which along with the southern coast from Albany to Esperance and areas of the South West will constitute the redrawn O’Connor.

• Liberal National Party candidate Andrea Caltabiano is launching a challenge against her 74-vote defeat by Labor’s Steve Kilburn in Chatsworth at the March 21 Queensland election. Claimed irregularities include double voting, particularly by candidates who lodged absent votes, and voters being wrongly removed from the roll.

• The Australasian Study of Parliament Group Queensland Chapter is holding a “behind the scenes review of the Queensland 2009 State Election” at the George Street parliamentary annexe from 6pm on Monday, Apirl 27. Star attractions are Antony Green, Treasurer Andrew Fraser, Keating government Attorney-General Michael Lavarch and Lawrence Springborg’s former chief-of-staff Paul Turner. RSVP by Monday to Erin Pasley, who can be reached at Erin-DOT-Paisley-AT-parliament-DOT-qld-DOT-gov-DOT-AU or on 3406 7931.

• No, I haven’t forgotten the May 2 Tasmanian Legislative Council elections – I will have a post up when I get time. In the meantime, Antony Green outlines the candidates.

NOTE: I am leaving open the previous thread for those who wish to continue the discussion, if that’s the right word, about asylum seekers, indigenous affairs, racism and the rest. This thread is for pretty much anything else.