Frankly, we’ve been amazed. The Electoral
Commission announces a federal seat from New South Wales
will go, and no beat-up merchant manages to turn it into a leadership yarn.

What’s going to happen in the
redistribution? Veteran psephologist Malcolm Mackerras has this to say:

It is my intention to write to the commissioners
suggesting that Lindsay be abolished. That is not because I have any view on
the member, Jackie Kelly, but rather because it is the most natural seat to
abolish. (I shall leave the details on that until I write to the
commissioners.)

It just happens that my wife’s Christian
name is Lindsay. So I thought I should ask her for permission before I write.
Her reply was: “I know the seat was not called after me. It was called
after Norman Lindsay, 1879-1969, writer and artist. That being the case you have
my permission.”

Crikey readers behaving like Crikey readers
offer these suggestions as to who should go:

  • I have no hesitation in nominating my local
    MHR Anthony Albanese and it would be great if his state partner Carmel Tebutt
    went as well. Can you imaging the combined parliamentary pensions they’d be
    collecting.

  • Even though I am a latte-sipping,
    chardonnay quaffing leftie, I think Garrett has been pretty useless. Why isn’t
    he as outspoken as Turnbull? He needs to pull his finger out and start setting
    Labor on the right track. Maybe he can be the spine that Beazley has lacked for
    the last 25 years.

  • I’d have to say we wouldn’t miss Laurie Ferguson at all. For
    those not-so-safe seats can I put in a bid for Danna Vale and Jackie Kelly?

  • How about Alan Cadman? Feels like decades
    of occupation with little to show for it.

  • No contest. Kelly Hoare.

And then we get onto Bennelong: “It’s a no brainier,”
one subscriber writes. “Bennelong must go, depriving the Rodent of his bolt
hole. Even more entertaining would be watching who got the hatchet to
give him another seat.”

But the best contribution has to be this
one: “Bennelong could easily be absorbed into surrounding electorates now that
half of it is subsiding into the Lane Cove tunnel.”