ARE YOU READY TO RUMBLE? Liberal Senate preselection Friday Fight Night reported at the speed of live

The positioning, the lobbying is over. At half-past seven this evening, the Policy Assembly of the Liberal Party will convene in Festival Centenary Hall for a gruelling knock-down slug-fest between candidates for the glittering prize of six years on the red leather in the states’ house. You even get to travel around the US calling yourself Senator where their Senators are many fewer in number proportionally and in some quarters are worshipped as household gods.

The doors to Centenary Hall at 104 Exhibition Street will be locked at 7.30pm. There are six candidates in the field and the fight night will include “round tables” of ten minutes with each candidate and following that each candidate receives six minutes to make a speech with four minutes of questions to all of the PA.

It is expected voting will start at 9.50pm for the first position and then a new vote each time a candidate is eliminated.

Faction boss and Turnbull numbers-man Senator Michael Ronaldson is expected to coast back comfortably as #1 Senate candidate with a fight to the death between caged contestants incumbent and devout Senator Julian McGauran and a well-credentialed pesky challenger in the form ex-McKinsey & Co. Oxford graduate and political staffer Ross Fox.

We will update this page with results as they come to hand.

May the best upholder of the Menzies legacy win.

Game on

In order to get the results as they come in via Twitter, be sure to refresh this page of freedom or if you’re a Twitter user get into it there. We’re not expecting a whole lot of action prior to the times outlined above but we’ll update when we hear anything interesting, like Old Man Winter David Kemp falling asleep or Ted Baillieu spewing profanities at rivals – real or imagined.

UPDATE: Senator Julian McGauran won in what was ultimately a very strong showing. Ross Fox had support from the younger Krogerites and in the final contest from some of the Baillieu brigade but in what some saw as a test of Peter Costello’s authority, McGauran enjoyed pretty overwhelming support.

McGauran’s pitch included references to his financing of country offices around the state with his own money and to the DLP that he also finances in order to continue its ongoing quest for the mistaken identity vote.

He showed the tremendous power of incumbency which still seemed to count in his favour despite or perhaps because of serving in the Senate since 1987.

So it’s six more years for Julian McGauran and a vote for Peter Costello should he one day decide to fulfil his destiny and claim the federal party leadership.

BONED: Mass sackings at Herald Sun as features centralised in Sin-City

We hear reports of a large number of redundancies at the Herald Sun, particularly focused on features and production staff. As many as fifty will go or be sent to Sydney as punishment just like the first European settlers. The features folk will report to former Sydney Morning Herald editor Alan “Dark Cloud (as in every silver lining has one)” Oakley who has been appointed the national editor, features.

We understand the announcement was made yesterday at an editors’ conference and was received with stunned silence. Insiders argue that having a national approach to features could make a lot of sense given how many of them are shared across News Ltd papers anyway. The changes could improve quality while reducing duplication and waste but they will almost certainly make the whole group much more Sydney focused.

Needless to say, the move has not been at all popular among Herald Sun staff.

WEDNESDAY UPDATE:

Amusingly, nearly a week later, our friends fiends at Crikey have sort of got onto this story, with their Margaret Simons writing:

I’ve spent far too long on the phone so far this week trying to chase down rumours about what is going on at News Limited, and in particular in the features area. The unsurprising result – that most of the rumours are born of fear rather than fact, but that something is going on – is in the Crikey email today. I must admit to some nerves, though. One of the rumours I got just last night was that 200 people would be sacked from News Limited tomorrow. I told Crikey editor Jonathan Green I thought this was not true, and that if it was true I would resign as his media correspondent. Now, that’s one way to get News Limited reporters wishing me career longevity. 

Meanwhile, the blog that seems to have gotten the latest round of rumours running is this one. This item was published last Friday, and I made some calls. Didn’t check out then, doesn’t now either.

But, as I say, there is something going on with Alan Oakley’s new position. See Crikey.

We responded:

Dear Ms Simons,

Our story is well sourced and we certainly stand by it. It has been confirmed by quite a large number of News Ltd patriots. If you try the switchboard, they’ll put you through, it’s not exactly a secret now.

I hate it when people say they’re going to quit if they’re wrong or ride naked on a horse down Bourke Street if they lose a bet or whatever so hopefully you can find a way of backtracking, should the condition precedent be triggered by a News Corp razor gang.

Not that we wish to be unsporting or unnecessarily bloodthirsty but does your quit pledge cover the prospect we reported of features being banished to convict town Sydney or just the gossip you heard about 200 souls being sacked in 24 hours.We certainly share your doubts about the latter.

While on the subject of error, I fondly recall your enthusiasm for Mark Latham in Quarterly Essay that seemed to claim he’d reinvented politics and could convert water into the cask chardonnay once served at ALP branch meets. Of course, everyone ended up being wrong about him.

Until his dark phase of shrieking “death to America,” it did indeed seem he could have been a contender. But by September 2004, when the essay was published, it was reasonably clear the bloke wasn’t up to the job. Possibly any job.

Also, your assertion that VEXNEWS is a blog is not correct, and, if you don’t mind me saying so, is a rather churlish and deliberately disparaging description. We publish news – fair and balanced – from a variety of patriotic sources, frequently breaking news stories that are followed up by our newspaper friends. Indeed, our news reports appear – with other news publishers – on Google news and have even been referred to on US television (thanks to the Family First candidate we exposed for exposing himself).

Anyway good luck, we hope there are no job losses at what is clearly the best newspaper in the nation – the Herald Sun – nor at email newsletter Crikey which is probably best described by reference to what my mama used to say, that if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.

Go in grace,
 

Andrew Landeryou

WITNESS OF TRUTH: Julian Grill found not guilty, praised by magistrate and awarded costs

Former WA Labor Minister and patriot Julian Grill has been acquitted on charges brought by the increasingly discredited Western Australian Corruption and Crime Commission.

An indication of just how flawed the CCC’s case was against Grill was the order of $19,000 in legal costs to Grill, something rarely done in the criminal jurisdiction and a sign that the Commission’s claims against him held little merit.

It is the second time in two weeks that bogus charges brought by the CCC were thrown out in court.

The Magistrate Michael Wheeler couldn’t have been more emphatic in his judgment:

“I believe he was being truthful on that day when he was giving evidence to the CCC,” Mr Wheeler told Perth Magistrates Court. I consider him to be a witness of truth.He was very candid in his evidence.”

Grill told a waiting media pack that the CCC’s conduct is wholly unacceptable:

“Not only myself but other people … by this CCC process had their reputations sullied, in some cases very, very badly indeed, that has happened in circumstances where the normal safeguards of procedural fairness and natural justice have been stripped away. We’ve been left in a situation where we haven’t been able to effectively defend ourselves in anyway to the allegations that have been made.”

The former minister continued:

Not only was I vindicated the Magistrate said in no uncertain terms that I was a truthful witness and had always been truthful.

Justice has been done, in part, now it remains a challenge for the Barnett government to seriously reform the WA CCC into a serious crime-fighter not a headline-chaser.

The CCC is clearly the most disgraced agency in law enforcement in the nation, its own corrupt deeds far exceeding anything committed by those they have targetted. The West’s most famous son Ben Cousins is just one of many victims of the state’s rampant corrupt drug trade, dominated by scary folk like bikies. And yet the Crime and Corruption Commission do nothing. Instead they pick easy marks, politicos demonised by the media for persecution and prosecution.

It’s a disgrace that cannot be allowed to continue.

UNLIKELY CANDIDATE: Former punk rocker and Noam Chomsky fan who drinks VB represents LNP in Queensland election

The LNP candidate for their safe seat of Beaudesert in the Queensland election, young buck Aidan McLindon, faces a challenge from election funding rorter Pauline Hanson and from a picture clearly demonstrating his subversive taste for the southern drop Victoria Bitter.

Our snout – a member of our growing Twitter sub-faction – sent us happy snaps of young Aidan with his party-hard LNP homeboys enjoying the nation’s finest brew. But that’s not usually how the good folk of outer suburban Brisbane regard it. Get XXXX or get f*cked is their usual attitude.

In Queensland, a candidate could easily get away with being an alcoholic, it some seats it might help, but sipping the nancy boy VB is almost as suspicious an act as wearing fishnet stockings under the RM Williams boots and moleskins.

William Bowe at Poll Bludger advises the suspicious acts don’t end there either. It is alleged the candidate was in a “punk grindcore” band with unpleasant and possibly satanic tributes to Noam Chomsky and “fret melting goodness” of a decidedly left-wing kind.

McLindon and an accessory also stage-invaded Big Brother back in 2005, revealing the name of the winner. He was fined $250 for creating a public nuisance.

Sounds like quite the piece of work.

But at least he’s not Pauline Hanson.

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GAME SET MATCH: Newnham slams "latte sipper" analysis of his Kororoit triumph

ALP boss Stephen Newnham has fired back at the baloney served up by The Age yesterday over increasingly hysterical claims about the Labor’s success in the Kororoit by-election.

He explained why it was perfectly legitimate and lawful to state – as Labor did – that a vote for Les Twentyman was a vote for the Liberals:

“The Liberal Party knew they couldn’t win Kororoit, so their strategy was to attempt to damage Labor’s brand and maximise the chances of Les Twentyman being elected,” he said. “That’s why they placed him No. 2 on their how-to-vote card. Therefore Les Twentyman was the de facto Liberal candidate for Kororoit, and a vote for him was a vote for the Liberal strategy.”

He said: “If Les Twentyman or any other independent were to run in any future election and it was clear that the Liberals were attempting to get them elected, we would use this strategy again.”

He said “working families” had excellent “bulldust detectors” and it was arrogant and patronising to think they could be hoodwinked. “We have great respect for the view of working families and believe they get it right 10 times more often than most latte-sipping journalists and commentators.”

Too bloody right they do.

VEXNEWS would prefer to restrain our usual active and spirited discussion of Twentyman until we’re sure he’s recovered from his medical issues which his publicist insists on telling us all about via press release. Even he’s entitled to some privacy when crook, we think. We certainly wish the old grouch the very best of health so he’s fit to run again in 2010 for a new bout of payout.

Not like that nasty piece of work Sharri Markson in the Gallery in Canberra, whose main claim to fame was impersonating a grieving relative after the July 7 terror attacks in London. Markson teared up, made herself looked distressed and carried flowers to get through to interview a bloke who’d been blown up. Nice.

POOR CURLY HAS A QUIET WEEK
Paul “Curly” Austin clearly didn’t have much on so he recycled a weeks old story about the notoriously incompetent Victorian Electoral Commission deeming a leaflet to be misleading. When reheating left-overs, it’s very important to add spice for taste, enough chili to minimise the risk of food poisoning,  so he did, making claims of lies, smears, “offences against democracy” and other demonstrably false hype of the kind he normally only lathers himself into a frenzy about when denouncing Ted Baillieu/Petro Georgiou’s factional foes in the Liberal Party.

Regular readers of VEXNEWS and its predecessor publication the OC will remember that Twentyman (well really his shadowy backers)  had promised to take the ALP to court over all the nasty lies they told about him. They of course never did, knowing they didn’t have a leg to stand on.

Principally their complaint was about one of the most devastating pieces of material put out in the campaign that directly quoted Twentyman’s support of heroin injecting rooms. It contained a then recent quote from him supporting such facilities.

He insisted it was all lies despite his views appearing in his own column and his own book. His backers complained to the VEC. They clearly rejected that complaint.

THE BUNGLING BUFFOONS OF THE VEC STRIKE AGAIN
Twentyman’s backers also complained about a leaflet that made the argument that a vote for Les Twentyman was a vote for the Liberals. No, howled Les, even though I’m receiving Liberal preferences, and they want me to win, I’m not a Liberal.

The VEC said saying a vote for Les Twentyman was a vote for the Liberals could be misleading. Poppycock.

No more so – as a wise person on Andrew Bolt’s blog yesterday made the point – than when John Howard said a vote for Labor is a vote for higher interest rates.

It’s just a rhetorical device to make a point.

Like in Queensland, when Labor used to push very hard in Brisbane saying a vote for the Liberals is a a vote for the then rather unfashionable Nationals. Again, technically not true in a literal sense but it’s not meant to be, it’s making a political argument saying supporting one gives support to the other. It’s an opinion and an entirely legitimate one.

The assertion that it’s all a nasty campaign of deceit or whatever is ridiculous and typical of the half-thought out hysteria that Austin trots out about the major political parties.

In his world view, every politician is a crook and every voter a f*cktard who is easily conned by Rupert Murdoch’s media and cynical TV executives.

It’s a less intelligently argued version of John Pilgerism. And Pilger while smart is clearly as mad as a cut snake on total fire ban day.

Newnham was right to demolish his argument, even batting up to the same journo who attempted to do him over the day before. Note the change in tone in the two articles. One hysterical. The other reasonable. A good effort. No wonder he’s still State Secretary. May it ever be thus.

PAST IT: Old man of misery Lawrence Money losing his disturbed mind

If you’d been sleeping from Christmas Eve to now, it is possible you might have missed the sensational circumstances of the departure of the former state Industry minister Theo Theophanous. His resignation on Christmas Eve was huge news. Kind of hard to miss. If you did it was certainly impossible to miss the furore over his annointed successor Evan Thornley who rejected the offer in what will undoubtedly be quite scandalous circumstances when the whole truth emerges.

MEMORY LOSS+SLASHED SUB-EDITING BUDGET=EGG ON FACE
But The Age’s Lawrence Money, its geriatric grouch gossipologist whose contact book is so old some believe it is chiselled in stone, appears to have missed the whole Theophanous resignation bit. Wearied by time and fate, Money today writes:

JEEPERS, what sort of liquor cabinet do they have on Spring Street’s front bench? Parliamentary terrier Richard Dalla-Riva placed a question on notice in Parliament this week asking two-hatted minister Theo Theophanous what sort of cellar he kept at his Major Projects and Industry & Trade (sic): “date, value and items”. Theophanous told the Legislative Council he had no idea: to try to tote up the stocks “would place a large burden on the department’s time and resources. A detailed report would be too voluminous”. What are we talking here? Crates? Container loads?

Theo is sadly no longer on the front bench and is not a “two-hatted minister” as absent-minded Alzheimerish Dirty Larry declares. Seems Lawrence must have forgotten or dozed through summer in his leafy courtyard at the back of his Kensington property where horrified neighbours suggest he occasionally “nudes up.”

Indeed Theo had more hats/portfolios than two anyway as we recall, if you have to be pedantic. And we know oxygen thief Larry loves pedantry, it fills his otherwise empty column. He’s forever correcting typos in shopping catalogues or MP’s newsletters or what not. A poor man’s media watch. And of course, given how pedantic Larry can be about everyone else, it might be useful to share with him that RDR’s question on notice was most certainly not “placed in Parliament this week.” It would have have been asked months ago, there is of course usually a considerable lag between Questions on Notice being filed and their response being available for publication in Hansard.

GROWING OLD DISGRACEFULY
One of the odd aspects of old age – we are advised – is that while you can easily recall useful stuff like how many goals John Coleman kicked in Round 8 in 1952, remembering where you parked the car gets harder and harder. (A Gloria Jeans $20 gift voucher to the first Essendon fan who remembers Coleman’s haul and let’s us know at editor(at)vexnews.com)

Memory loss tragically seems to be plaguing the Age’s sinister old turd Lawrence Money who while forgetting significant events also showed his breathtaking ignorance this week when he rather foolishly took on Andrew Bolt at the Herald Sun about whether Anne Frank was referred to as Anna Frank in the Netherlands. Of course she is, but forgetful Lawrence insisted on calling it a mistake. Bolt – quite correctly – was having none of it, slam-dunking the ignorant and culturally insensitive old goat in the most splendid way:

I would indeed be a donkey had I mispronounced Anne Frank’s name, not only because she is perhaps the most famous victim of the Holocaust, but because she was from Holland, as were my parents, and she shared the first name of a beloved Dutch aunt of mine. But Money should have twigged, given my background, that I in fact pronounced Anne Frank’s name just as she would have pronounced it herself. And just as anyone from Holland pronounces it still. Should Money still doubt that “Anna” is indeed the correct pronunciation, may I suggest he watch the above video (in English) to hear how the late Otto Frank referred to his own daughter?  Or does Money think Frank a “donkey”, too?

Bolt is clearly at the peak of his powers these days. Sharp columns, a raucous blog of freedom that keeps conservative home fires burning with rigorous debate and an ability to make an argument certainly not exceeded by any actually elected conservative. We hope they take care of that someday. Do you have to be outside of Parliament to process the fact that Ted is not just Red he is also Dead. Bolt gets it, why doesn’t the Liberal party room?

By contrast, Money is on the way out in a newspaper living on borrowed time and borrowed funds. His blog – much more than his column – has offered us more insight into his politics, he’s surprisingly conservative in a curmudgeonly old man way. He wants to take his Zimmer frame to graffiti artists (fair enough) whose activities he describes as “piss”, refers to state Parliament House as the “Spring Street Soviet” and seems to harbour a deep hatred of pedophiles. No arguments there. But he also hates the Church and Catholics too as his vicious attacks on the Wren family in recent times have demonstrated.

It is true to say that his politically incorrect views are quite different from the prevailing wisdom at the Age, the one and true Spencer Street Soviet. He’s always been an odd fit at the stridently left-wing Age, rarely spends much time there, preferring the comfort of “working from home” while sucking in thousands of dollars a week.

Slowing down, he has slipped into pedantry for the most part leaving the reporting of most of the gossip in the gossip column to his partner in slime Suzanne Carbone. If he can get away with retiring while still being paid, then we should congratulate him for him being just the most recent example of a fraud on recently massively diluted Fairfax shareholders. But if you’re going to play pedant you’d better get the detail right. And as today’s example and his embarrassment after pinging Bolt demonstrate, he just doesn’t.

NOT LONG FOR THIS WORLD
For a pedant to be losing his memory must surely be the cruellest fate of all. Couldn’t happen to a nastier piece of work.

With his crown so clearly slipping, there has been speculation that looming economy drives will probably run him down and leave sultry Suzy in place but doing the gig for the full five days, rather than her current cosy two/three day a week job for full-time pay.

Cocktail parties, cutting and pasting emails and checking the voicemail, it’s not really the most demanding job in journalism, but it is seemingly beyond the aging disgracefully Lawrence Money.

It would be wrong at this stage to break the tradition of reminding readers that Money is a criminal, as found by the Magistrates Court after he effectively pleaded guilty to two offences relating to child endangering when he caused the name a child who was the subject of Family Law proceedings to be published the Sunday Age several times. As a first-time criminal offender, Money was able to beg the court’s pardon and entered the criminal diversion programme helping to get back him among the  law abiding and keep him out of jail. As part of his criminal rehabilitation, he was required to pay a $10,000 fine, that was given to Ronald McDonald house at the suggestion of the family of his victim.