From the Crikey grapevine, the latest tips and rumours …

Things that make you go hmmm. We thought we were done with dual nationals in the Australian Parliament until yesterday afternoon, when Senate President Stephen Parry dropped the bombshell that he too may be a Brit. He’d just been keeping calm and carrying on until now. The Tasmanian Senator is still investigating his status and that of his father who came to Australia as a child. Parry says he will resign immediately from the Senate if he is found to be a dual national, but what happens next is not simple. Learned psephologists like Kevin Bonham and the ABC’s Antony Green say that a re-count of the Tasmanian votes would elect Richard Colbeck — so far, so straight-forward (except for the fact Eric Abetz originally forced Colbeck to an unwinnable position on the ticket — so that should be an interesting reunion). But Bonham explains how the Greens’ Nick McKim could also be in danger:

“The possibility of a special count for Parry’s seat (a recount of all votes as if the departing Senator had died before the poll) creates new problems in dealing with the replacements for ineligible Senators. The reasons for this concern two unusual features of the Tasmanian Senate count: the very high rate of below-the-line voting and the extremely close result for the final seat. Incumbent Nick McKim (Green) held off Kate McCulloch (One Nation) by just 141 votes. McKim should have been re-elected easily but the Greens vote was damaged by the successful campaign to save Lisa Singh, who had been dumped to a normally unwinnable position by her party.”

Antony Green says it’s unlikely McKim would lose his spot depending on how the High Court referred the recount to the Australian Electoral Commission, and Bonham does a very detailed look into precedents set in previous cases.

Bernardi misses the party. Ms Tips has followed with great interest the rampage of Cory Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives and its Abzorbaloff-like ingestion of other minor hard right parties and politicians, as Bernardi attempts to carve out a decent chunk of the fractious far right, but is there already too big a player blocking his march to the Queensland parliament? Back in July, Bernardi did a tour of Queensland and promised that AC had filed the paperwork to to register in Queensland ahead of the as yet unannounced state poll. However, with Pauline Hanson’s One Nation consistently polling at between 15% and 18% in the state, Bernardi has appeared to cede now that the election has actually been called: The Australian Conservatives are not on the register of Queensland political parties and its candidate page for Queensland is made up of naught but a pending and two TBAs. 

Scary stuff on Halloween. What is the best way to react to a union boycott of a popular product for a Liberal MP? While we aren’t expecting a chorus of Solidarity Forever, we are definitely perplexed by this decision from Liberal MP, who has taken a stand against the Australian Manufacturing Union’s call for Australians to boycott Streets ice creams this summer. Streets’ parent company Unilever has applied to the Fair Work Commission to terminate the current workplace agreement and the union says the change could leave staff with a 46% pay cut. Falinski doesn’t agree with the boycott, tweeting “what’s wrong with a company that employs Oz, pays tax & makes a profit?”. The comment is fine, but the video of Falinski enjoying a Bubble O’Bill is just a lot.

Worth the paper it’s written on? Which Melbourne cultural institution recently gave its employees an insight into just how dire the market is for those in the arts industry? A tipster tells us a Melbourne landmark has just welcomed a new administration assistant — eminently overqualified for the gig with a Masters of Arts and Cultural Management.

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