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South Australia's state Liberal opposition is preparing for two by-elections, following the death of long-serving independent MP Bob Such.

Dr Such's family released a statement to say the independent MP, who has held the seat of Fisher since 1989, died on Saturday morning after being diagnosed with a brain tumour six months ago.

A by-election for the seat of Fisher will provide the Liberals with a chance to add to its 21 lower house seats.

Labor holds 23 seats in the lower house but independent MPs Martin Hamilton-Smith and Geoff Brock have promised to back the government on supply and no-confidence motions, while voting freely on other issues.

A by-election will also be held in the neighbouring seat of Davenport, with Liberal MP Iain Evans planning to retire in the coming months.

Opposition leader Steven Marshall says nine Liberal candidates will contest preselection for Davenport, with a candidate to be chosen this week.

"Everybody is, at the moment, focused on celebrating the contribution that Bob Such has made," he said on Monday.

"But quickly, there will be people that will be turning their minds to what happens next."

University of Adelaide lecturer Clem MacIntyre said he expected the Liberals to win both seats but a strong independent candidate could draw strong support.

"Davenport is a long-time Liberal seat that the Liberals will expect to hold," he told ABC radio.

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SA Liberals prepare for two by-elections

Try as they might, reporters and liberal critics can't quite get Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to go all in and criticize President Obama. In a new interview over atSalon, Thomas Frank lays out all of the complaints of disappointed Democrats, but Warren doesn't exactly bite:

FRANK: In some ways thats exactly the problem. When I talk to people, they often say Democrats aren't the party of working people at all. And they talk about NAFTA and deregulating Wall Street, and they say, look at these guys, they wont prosecute the financial industry. They say, Democrats talk a good game, but theyre always on the side of the elite at the end of the day. What do you say to these people?

WARREN: Were the only ones fighting back. Right now, on financial reform, the Republicans are trying to roll back the financial reforms of Dodd-Frank. In fact, Mitch McConnell has announced that if he gets the majority in the Senate, his first objective is to repeal healthcare and his second is to roll back the financial reforms, and in particular to target the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau the one agency thats out there for American families, the one that has returned more than four billion dollars to families who got cheated by big financial institutions. Thats in just three years.

There was also this exchange, which again lays out the disappointment something of a longing on the part of disaffected liberals to have someone of Warren's stature validate their frustration (emphasis ours):

FRANK: Heres the penultimate question: everything youre saying are issues that have been important to me most of my adult life. In 2008, I thought I had a candidate who was going to address these things. Right? Barack Obama. Today, my friends and I are pretty disappointed with what hes done. I wonder if you feel he has been forthright enough on these subjects. And I also wonder if you think that someone can take any of this stuff on without being president. You know, there are a lot of good politicians in America who have their heart in the right place. But theyre not the president. Well anyhow. You understand my frustration

WARREN: I understand your frustration, Tom and, actually, I talk about this in the book. When I think about the president, for me, its about both halves. If Barack Obama had not been president of the United States we would not have a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Period. Im completely convinced of that. And I go through the details in the book, and I could tell them to you. But he was the one who refused to throw the agency under the bus and made sure that his team kept the agency alive and on the table. Now there was a lot of other stuff that also had to happen for it to happen. But if he hadnt been there, we wouldnt have gotten the agency. At the same time, he picked his economic team and when the going got tough, his economic team picked Wall Street.

FRANK: You might say, always. Just about every time they had to compromise, they compromised in the direction of Wall Street.

WARREN: Thats right. They protected Wall Street. Not families who were losing their homes. Not people who lost their jobs. Not young people who were struggling to get an education. And it happened over and over and over. So I see both of those things and they both matter.

This is the harshest criticism could muster, and it's not exactly new. In fact, the original criticism of Obama's financial team when he picked them was that they were Clinton retreads, collected fat Wall Street paychecks and favored deregulation. Obama, in Warren's view, picked the wrong economic team, and they wound up pickingWall Street. Again, this isn't a new assessment of Obama, nor is it the kind of barn-burner denunciationsome liberals are apparently pining for.

Partly, it's because it wouldn't do Warren and her fellow Democrats any good to criticize the party and the president in a tough midtermyear. But Warrenhas shown plenty of reticence to criticize any of her fellow Democrats -- including Hillary Clinton.

Continue reading here:
Sorry, liberals. Elizabeth Warren still wont really criticize Obama or Clinton.

ACT deputy opposition leader Alistair Coe. Photo: Jay Cronan

An administrative tribunal challenge to freedom of information charges brought by ACT deputy opposition leader Alistair Coe will begin this week, as he seeks information on profits made by the Labor Party from changing the status on the lease of a Weston Creek club.

In August, bureaucrats from the ACT Environment and Planning Directorate asked the Liberal opposition to pay $2087 for the release of documents about the Weston Creek Labor Club, citing the need for 65 hours of work to collate information.

The charge included provision for nearly 29 hours to deciding what could be released, at a cost of $614.56.

Locating the required documents would take public servants 36 hours and cost $376.62, as well as charges of $1096 for photocopying.

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Mr Coe applied to the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal for the cost decision by the directorate's deputy director-general to be reviewed, arguing the release of the information was in the public interest.

He had previously sought for the fees to be waived by the directorate in keeping with long-standing convention that members of parliament are not charged for freedom of information requests.

The matter has been listed for consideration at a directions hearing on Wednesday.

Debate about concessional leases resumed in the ACT after a tribunal challenge over the Canberra Raiders' planned redevelopment of asite adjacent to Northbourne Oval in Braddon.

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Canberra Liberals challenge costs decision on Labor club FoI request

October 9, 2014|10:05 am

A protester dressed as a copy of the Bible joins groups demonstrating outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington June 30, 2014.

"Why do so many liberals despise Christianity?" liberal columnist Damon Linker pondered Wednesday.

In citing two recent examples, Linker was not writing about despising Christians, although that could be part of it, but despising Christianity as a belief system.

In the first example, Brian Palmer wrotefor Slate, a liberal news website, about the discomfort he feels over the fact that missionary doctors are helping people in developing nations, motivated by their Christian faith. Palmer believes that their medical work should be separate from their religion, even though they are engaged in the medical work, at great personal sacrifice, because of their religion.

Palmer's distaste for religion leads him, Linker wrote, to an illiberal notion of separating religion from health care.

In the second example, Gordon College, a Christian college in Massachusetts, is being investigated by its accreditation agency for upholding a Christian understanding of sexuality. More specifically, it forbids homosexual practice. (It also forbids all sexual activity outside of marriage, and those with same-sex attraction are welcomed to be part of the Gordon College community.)

"The accreditation board is not so much objecting to the college's treatment of gays as it is rejecting the legitimacy of its devoutly Christian sexual beliefs," Linker wrote.

Linker is a former conservative. He previously edited First Things, a conservative Catholic magazine. After rejecting conservatism and becoming a liberal, he wrote The Theocons: Secular America Under Siegein 2007, a book critical of the Christian Right.

Many of his recent articles have dealt with the recent trend of illiberal liberals, or, as he wrote in July, "how liberalism became an intolerant dogma."

Excerpt from:
Do Liberals Really Despise Christianity?

The Napthine Government has been reliant on balance-of-power MP Geoff Shaw. Picture: CHRIS SCOTT Source: News Limited

THE State Government is set to dump more than 20 pieces of legislation it had committed to deliver, including a Bill to strengthen child protection, and laws it promised as part of the Governments response to the child abuse inquiry.

With only three sitting days left before the election, the Government will enter the final sitting week with more than 40 pieces of outstanding legislation on the notice paper of both houses.

The Government hopes to pass more than 10 Bills this week, but will be limited to two days of debate.

In the last sitting week of 2010 the Brumby Government had seven Bills on the list to be debated.

Among the legislation set to be dumped is a Bill which paves the way for the old Melbourne Market site to be handed over to the construction company building the East West Link tollway, which could further delay the project.

Laws to ban synthetic drugs and a Bill to improve the conduct of councillors spruiked by the government as some of the most significant reforms to local government in 20 years will also be binned.

And in a bizarre move, more legislation will be introduced on Tuesday to the already bulging legislative agenda.

Government spokesman Mark Lee said the government would bring forward priority Bills and other legislation would be reintroduced if the Government is re-elected.

The ditched Bills. Source: News Corp Australia

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Liberals ditch 20 Bills in legislation backflip