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Many thought the Labor preselection contest for the Wollongong-based seat of Cunningham would be a one-horse race, but a new high-profile late starter has entered the line-up.

Misha Zelinsky, the assistant national secretary of the Australian Workers Union and a former criminal defence lawyer,will run against Alison Byrnes-Scully, staffer to the retiring sitting member Sharon Bird and partner to state MP Paul Scully.

Mr Zelinsky, a recent Fulbright scholar to the United States, has warned Australiais heading down the path of the US where he says home ownership is now out of reach for the average person.

"We don't want to head that way here, and the warning signs are there," he said.

"You look at housing prices, for example;housing prices have absolutely exploded in this country but wages haven't, job security hasn't.

"If you are a young person today trying to make it in the Illawarra, the quality of our schools is going down because we are cutting there, there's no apprenticeships, there's cuts to TAFE, university has become more expensive."

In a nod to aspirational voters being targeted by Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese, Mr Zelinsky said people should not be poor if they worked hard.

"And that's something that is very dear to me."

It is unclear yet if other candidates will come forward before preselections close Monday, but whoever wins is likely to also win the seat currently held by Labor with a 13.3 per cent margin.

Meanwhile, former NSW transport ministerAndrew Constance has announced his Liberal Party preselection for the Shoalhaven and South Coast-based seat of Gilmore.

Making the announcement in front of the half-built Nowra Bridge, Mr Constance, dressed casually in a checked shirt, played the role of wanting not to be seen as a regular politician.

"What is important over the next few months is the way in which I prosecute the case (and) change politics in our region in a way that we bring back the unity," he said.

"And I think when people are struggling every day with their businesses, not being able to get staff, we have got seniors who are huddled in doors through fear of going down the local shops and contracting the virus."

Mr Constance is casting himself as a game-changer willing to stand up to anybody, including Prime Minister Scott Morrison as he has in the past on the bushfire issue.

"The last thing people are going to want is a mouthful of politics, they are not going to get it from me," he said.

"I could have walked from politics but I have chosen not to.

"I want to see an absolute change in the way in which politics works within this country and works within a regional level."

Mr Constance won preselection after the withdrawal of other candidates including Gilmore Federal Electoral Conference president Paul Ell.

Labor's Fiona Phillips holds the seat with a slim 2.6 per cent margin.

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Labor preselection in Cunningham heats up; Andrew Constance confirmed for Liberals in Gilmore - ABC News

OTTAWA Two new reports released this morning reveal what Canadian families have been experiencing for years: the cost of housing in Canada is skyrocketing making it out of reach for many. Meanwhile, the Liberal government's response to this escalating crisis is more talk instead of action. New Democrats have and will continue to push and advocate for tangible actions so that access to safe, secure, affordable housing is a basic human right, and for those who dream of buying a home so they can have their dream come true.

Its no secret that buying a house has become unaffordable in this country, making it an impossible dream for so many families, said the NDPs Critic for Housing, Jenny Kwan. This crisis is only going to get worse as long as the federal government continues to allow housing to be treated like a stock market. Immediate action needs to be taken to crack down on speculation that is driving up the cost of housing."

The Parliamentary Budget Officer indicated that housing affordability will only continue to grow if nothing is done. Canadas population-adjusted housing stock is the lowest in the G7, with Ontario, Manitoba and Alberta being the worst affected provinces. In Ontario alone, 650,000 units would be required to reach the same level of homes per capita as the average in other provinces.

New Democrats are urging the Liberals to build 500,000 affordable units to address the countrys affordable housing supply shortage. We are also calling on the federal government to establish a fund for not-for-profit organizations to acquire residential housing that comes onto the market; immediately put a moratorium on the acquisition of affordable homes by Real Estate Investment Trusts; and establish a meaningful foreign buyer's tax to stop rich investors from treating our housing market like a stock market and driving up prices.

I have heard from too many Canadians who dont think they will ever be able to buy a home. Thats not right, added Kwan. Trudeau made a lot of big promises on housing during the election, its time he stuck to them. New Democrats will keep fighting to help families find a place to live."

Read the rest here:
Canadian housing crisis worse than ever as Liberals sit by - ndp.ca

My Twitter accounts pinned tweet is one that says Trump would have elevated his reputation if he had conceded the election quickly; it concludes now people just hope he croaks. The tweet is dated Jan. 4, 2021so elevating the tweet is admittedly a kind of virtue signal: I am not the kind of Trump guy who backed his post-election antics, and Im pleased to have made that clear two days before what one writer aptly called the cornpone intifada.

But the people just hope he croaks line is too vague. The sentiment is shared by never-Trumpers and no small number of once pro-Trump activists and intellectuals who generally approved of his stated policy goals, only to experience a dysfunctional administration that accomplished little. As Ann Coulter (an early and vital Trump supporter) memorably put it, Trump is the opposite of a duck, flailing madly and going nowhere instead of moving quietly ahead in the water.

But it is not shared by Joe Biden, most elected Democrats, and the huge interlocking liberal complex of that makes up the mainstream media: for them, Trump is the best thing ever, someone they can portray effectively as a buffoonish fascist wannabe, while he remains an ineffectual foe with no real sense of how to use power. He is the essential glue and greatest hope of the Democratic coalition, and probably the only Republican a Democrat could defeat in 2024. Indeed, if the Democratic primary electorate moves leftward, as well it might, Trump could conceivably lose to Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, ushering in authoritarian socialist rule in the United States by free election.

Of course, Trump is a useful foil to Biden, whose aging communication skills revive when speaking of his 2020 adversary. But the fixation on Trump and January 6 envelops the whole party. How many times a day does one hearfrom the lips of a Democratic official or a CNN or NPR commentatorthat piously pronounced phrase our democracy to connote all that the January 6 rioters and Trump purportedly threaten. The phrase feigns a reverence to American constitutional practices, which is why Democrats are so enamored of it. But almost invariably it is coupled with transformative action agenda that is the very opposite of constitutional regard: ending the filibuster, packing the Supreme Court, the replacement of an Election Day where self-governing citizens go to the polls and vote by a rolling election period dominated by mail-in ballots and vote harvesting by activists. Such proposals are self-evidently designed to precisely subvert the mechanisms the Founding Fathers intended to encourage: gradualism and the need for decisive majorities to enact major changes into our democracyin other words, to undermine precisely the institutions which have made the United States arguably the most successful long-standing democracy in the world.

Writing for Unherd, Simon Cottee makes some comparisons between the way neoconservatives deployed September 11 as a lever for their long term agendas of war in the Middle East and the way contemporary Democrats are trying to use January 6. But if the goals of the neoconservatives were fairly tightly focused on the invasion of Iraq (and perhaps later Iran), those of todays liberal establishment are diffuse: for some they involve jettison of the checks and balances built into the American system, for others simply a means for the relegation of every aspect of Trumpismincluding the policy aspirations which remain broadly popular permanently into a realm of deplorable moral oblivion. In actuality, January 6 was a riot involving a few hundred mostly unarmed people whose breach of the Capitol was made possible by almost unfathomably poor preparation by riot control police (a critical factor about which we would surely be hearing much more if Trump and his administration bore responsibility for it). The Democrats seek to turn it into world historical insurrection whose nefarious meaning must be contemplated every day, as the New York Times somberly admonishes.

For the Democrats, every day that we talk about January 6 is a day where we are not talking about soaring rates of crime brought about by the progressives war on cops, or inflation accelerating to 1970s levels, or the months of rioting, egged on by prominent Democrats, including then candidates Biden and Kamala Harris, that followed the George Floyd killingrioting far more deadly and destructive than January 6. And every day of January 6 is a way to keep Trump in the spotlight, and in a way keep his persona central to the Republican Party. Its a goal which corresponds perfectly with Trumps own insatiable quest for the limelight; He seems to believe, perhaps correctly, that if he had (as he should have) conceded that he lost the election, albeit one held under unusual covid circumstances, his role as a future party leader would be diminished.

This reinforcing mutual self-interest of two campsthe Democratic establishment and Trump himselfnow constitute a real force in American politics, and possibly a barrier to any kind of enlightened leadership emerging from Republicans for the 2024 presidential race. The easiest way out one doesnt want to say out loud, but it does involve actuarial tables and the fickle finger of health.

Scott McConnell is founding editor of theAmerican Conservativeand author ofEx-Neocon: Dispatches from the Post-9/11 Ideological Wars.

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Why Liberals Secretly Love Donald Trump - The National Interest

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If the Trudeau Liberals want us to believe them when they insist they wont tax your home, they might want to stop talking about the issue and funding studies on it.

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The Liberals are testy and on edge once again as members of the public, pundits and politicos point to the latest call for a tax on homes.

This week a study funded by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, a federal Crown agency, put forward a proposal to tax homes worth more than $1 million. More shockingly, the tax proposal wasnt a standard capital gains scheme this proposal was to tax your home while you are living in it.

They propose an annual surtax on homes of between 0.5% and 1% per year to raise $5.8 billion annually for the government. That money, according to the report, would be used to provide benefits to renters.

All of this is the brainchild of Dr. Paul Kershaw who runs what is called the Generation Squeeze Lab at the University of British Columbia. His study, paid for by CMHC, seeks to fundamentally alter Canadian housing and to a large extent the Canadian economy by attempting to use government policy to encourage rental housing and co-ops while discouraging home ownership.

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There is no doubt that there is a home affordability crisis in much of the country driven by a number of factors, including policies of the federal, provincial and municipal governments. The solution funded by the Trudeau Liberals though is to tax homes, discourage home ownership and make that dream less affordable for many.

A home worth $1 million may conjure up images of mansions for some but the reality in places like Toronto, Vancouver and their suburbs is that this is a normal home price. The report even points out that 13% of homes in Ontario meet this criteria while in British Columbia its 21%.

Taxing these homes wont make it easier for the next generation to buy a home, it will simply be a wealth transfer from homeowners to renters.

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The Liberals should reject this idea in the strongest terms and tell CMHC to stop studying ways to tax homes. Otherwise, no one will believe them when they say they dont want to do so.

This isnt the first time the Liberals have toyed with the idea while claiming its not on their radar.

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In late 2018, the Liberals put together a series of policy proposals to be considered for the coming budget and the 2019 election campaign. Then Toronto MP Adam Vaughan tabled a proposal that called for taxing any gains on primary residences at 50% for a home sold after one year of ownership going down to a 5% tax on homes owned for five years.

The Liberals didnt proceed with it but they did consider it, something Vaughan denied in a tweet aimed at me and filled with abusive language on Friday.

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Thats a lieI wrote the memoits explicitly identified as an idea advanced to Govt by outside advocatesits a briefing note to Caucusnot a policy proposal& was definitively rejectedYoure lazy & being very dishonest, Vaughan tweeted.

The problem for Vaughan is that the paper he wrote is clearly labelled at the top, Policy Proposal 2 and even if they rejected the policy, they did consider it.

The Liberals keep flirting with this idea of taxing peoples homes, their primary residences, and then get extremely defensive when called on it. They must know the idea isnt popular with Canadians and will cost them votes but they still keep flirting.

Until that stops, I and the millions of homeowners across the country will continue to keep a close eye on what the Liberals are doing.

blilley@postmedia.com

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LILLEY: Liberals keep flirting with taxing your home while denying it's on the agenda - Toronto Sun

The Manitoba Liberals are bowing out of an upcoming Thompson byelection out of respect for late MLA Danielle Adams.

Adams, 38, was killed in a traffic collision on Highway 6 while driving to Winnipeg on Dec. 9, 2021.

The NDP MLA was elected to her first term in 2019.

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In a statement Thursday, Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont said his party will not be running a candidate in the byelection to replace her, waiting instead until the next provincial election.

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If it were not for this tragic accident, Danielle would have held her seat until the next general election, said Lamont.

Politics is politics, and Manitoba Liberals are committed to running strong candidates and strong campaigns in every Manitoba constituency in the next provincial general election.

Given the tragic circumstances of Danielles passing, we believe that this is the right and honourable thing to do.

Lamont called on his Progressive Conservative colleagues to do the same.

2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

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Manitoba Liberals decline to run candidate in Thompson byelection out of respect for late MLA - Globalnews.ca