politicalowl

The chief political adviser to the ACT government has told me that increasing the number of poker machines in Canberra is being considered as part of a redevelopment plan for the city's Canberra Casino. The casino owner Aquis Entertainment wants 500 pokies as part of its plan to invest $330 million in what it calls "Canberra’s entertainment, leisure, dining, retail, gaming, accommodation and social infrastructure." Official policy of the Labor/Greens coalition government is for a phased reduction in the number of gaming machines operating in the Territory. While machines can be traded between clubs, for every four authorisations traded, one is forfeited and taken out of operation. Yet Chief Minister Andrew Barr's chief of staff Jamie Driscoll raised the prospect of giving the Casino permission for extra machines when I met with him on Friday on behalf of my client the Mawson Raiders Club to discuss the Casino redevelopment proposal.

Michelle Grattan , University of Canberra It’s ON between Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull – the political equivalent of nuclear war. Escalating hostilities have come to a spectacular head over Wednesday’s story in The Australian. It reported the Turnbull government’s defence white paper had delayed the acquisition of new submarines compared with the draft produced under Abbott, with the former prime minister saying he was “flabbergasted at this decision”. The story, by The Australian’s foreign editor Greg Sheridan, quoted sections of a draft of the white paper from Abbott’s time. The draft was a classified national security committee (NSC) document. When Abbott was prime minister the Turnbull forces often accused the then prime minister’s office of leaking NSC documents. Responding to a question from Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, Turnbull announced that the secretary of the Defence Department, Dennis Richardson, had asked the Australian Federal Police to investigate the lea

The Party of Trump, and the Path Forward for Democrats - NY Times editorial: "The Republicans seem to be reeling, unable or unwilling to comprehend that a shady, bombastic liar is hardening the image of their party as a symbol of intolerance and division." Planet on the Ballot  - We now have a pretty good idea who will be on the ballot in November: Hillary Clinton, almost surely ..., and Donald Trump, with high likelihood ... . But even if there’s a stunning upset in what’s left of the primaries, we already know very well what will be at stake — namely, the fate of the planet. Inside the Clinton Team’s Plan to Defeat Donald Trump  - In the days after Donald J. Trump vanquished his Republican rivals in South Carolina and Nevada, prominent Democrats supporting Hillary Clinton arranged a series of meetings and conference calls to tackle a question many never thought they would ask: How do we defeat Mr. Trump in a general election? Big-Donor Money Has Not Worked in the 201