Andrew Bartlett – the former deputy Democrats leader who looks likely to return to the Senate after a nine-year absence, this time as a Queensland Greens senator replacing Larissa Waters – says it’s “good to have some clarity finally”.

“It’s been a long wait for everybody and a long time where hundreds of thousands of people who voted or Greens representation in Queensland haven’t had any,” he tells the Guardian.

“I’m obviously happy that it’s looking likely that it will be me. It’s one step along the path.”

Bartlett planned last year to be based in far-north Queensland if he were elected alongside Waters but says this no longer looks “tenable”.

“With half the term gone and all the expense of setting up a new office rather than just moving straight into the one Larissa was in [in Paddington, inner Brisbane], I think that would possibly not go down well,” he says.

(The local paper the Courier-Mail gave Waters some stick in 2014 over a fitout of the office that cost $414,000, which was approved by the finance department.)

But Bartlett says he is keen to “hit the ground running at full bore [and] to get around a lot of the state as quickly as I can, to be connecting with the people of Queensland, including regional Queensland”.

Another issue on Bartlett’s mind is the possibility of a state election being called within days.

“If that happens there’s an immediate issue of the Greens having a real opportunity to win seats i the state parliament,” he says.

“We want to make the most of those. Having work in the federal parliament reinforcing the impact we can make on every issue you can think of, just by virtue of having representation, just to show the difference of having someone back in there.”

Bartlett says if there are challenges to his eligibility on the basis of his employment by the Australian National University – which some may allege represents a forbidden “office of profit under the crown” for a federal candidate – he understands they would be done through a motion in parliament.

“I can’t control what others do but given there’s been three months without duly elected Greens representation, the main thing for me frankly is to have somebody in there and getting on with it,” he says.

The next person on the Greens 2016 Queensland senate ticket was Ben Pennings, who had since resigned from the Greens to work with the anti-Adani activist group, the Galilee Blockade.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2017/oct/27/politics-liv...

Liberal senator Stephen Parry has confirmed he is a British citizen and will now resign from the Parliament.

• British Home Office confirmed Parry has citizenship through his father
• He will submit his resignation as a Tasmanian senator and Senate President tomorrow
• Richard Colbeck will most likely get his Senate seat, but it's not yet clear who would become President

Yesterday, Senator Parry revealed he had doubts about his citizenship status because his father was born in the UK, and emigrated to Australia in the 1950s.

He has now released a statement saying the British Home Office confirmed he is a citizen by virtue of his father's birthplace.

In a letter to his Senate colleagues, he wrote it was "with a heavy heart" he had to inform them he would be submitting his resignation as Senate President and as a Tasmanian senator to the Governor-General tomorrow.

The timing of Senator Parry's announcement means he will not be able to make a farewell speech in the Upper House, but he thanked his colleagues in his statement for their support and confidence in him.

He said he regarded many of his colleagues as good friends, "from all quarters of the chamber".

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-01/stephen-parry-confirms-he-is-a-bri...

Another "good bloke" who did not read the small print on his contract with the electorate...

Politics is winning hands down over policy in the endless battle for good government in Canberra.

Already damaged by the chronic Turnbull-Abbott divide, last week the government was reeling from the furore over police raids on unions. Then came the High Court citizenship decision.

The Nationals are devastated. Having lost both leader Barnaby Joyce and deputy leader Fiona Nash, they now face having Nash replaced in the Senate by a Liberal – the candidate immediately below her on the Coalition’s 2016 NSW Senate ticket.

To top it off, the present acting PM is foreign minister Julie Bishop, breaking with the internal understanding that the stand-in will always be the Nationals leader. The punishment is complete.

But shed no tears for the Nationals. They have been instrumental in wrecking Australia’s response to the climate crisis and ensuring that Malcolm Turnbull’s “solution”, his National Electricity Guarantee (NEG), is a dog of an idea.

This is said with a heavy heart. Since the abolition of a carbon price in 2014 we have endured a virtual absence of energy and climate policy of any sort in Canberra.

Fading hopes that the dumping of Tony Abbott would see progress were revived when Turnbull combined climate and energy under Josh Frydenberg’s ministry – something both Liberal and Labor administrations had failed to do. But since then, nothing.

In the past year the Coalition has rejected two schemes to put a price on carbon emissions, the latest resulting from their own commissioned inquiry by chief scientist Alan Finkel. The NEG and its “powering forward” promise is its last-gasp attempt to retrieve something of value from the mess.

As it stands, the NEG is barely a band-aid over the festering wound of Coalition climate politics. To even begin to “power forward” it needs agreement from the Council of Australian Governments, which will be a challenge with key states already expressing disapproval.

read more:

http://southwind.com.au/2017/10/31/turnbulls-energy-plan-lifeline-or-dea...

Yep... It's not called the NEG for nothing... The NEG stands for the NEGative plan... and you would have seen the Turdball government's "powering forward" adverts on the box by now... How these got through the censors, one wonders. False advertising attracts big fines...