Wolfpanther vs Froschfilter

This Sunday at the Metro I’m joined by guest DJ Froschfilter. We previously collaborated on two online collaborations in lockdown last year – here https://www.mixcloud.com/wolfpanther/ping-pong-4-wolfpanther-vs-dj-froschfilter/ and here https://www.mixcloud.com/wolfpanther/ping-pong-10-wolfpanther-vs-dj-froschfilter/. He’s also been a previous Metro guest as well as a guest at Metronomic Underground.

Also his alter ego Tim Koch has been playing a few live gigs lately and has just released an excellent new EP on the CPU label – https://shop.cpurecords.net/album/tourbillon following up the great Scordatura album – check out the videos here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP8D2CMgQCs&list=PLHYXTeJnE5Pshw6BWiYDdtnrhldPFDoRh

Also Cyclic Defrost interviewed him recently https://www.cyclicdefrost.com/2021/02/tim-koch-taking-a-formula-and-using-it-in-reverse/

Wolfpanther vs Minerva

This Sunday at the Metro my guest DJ is Minerva, first time guest with me at the Metro but I was previously her DJ guest in Utrecht so it’s great to finally get to return the favour.

As usual we both bring some favourite records and take turns playing one for one to see where it takes us.

Wolfpanther vs DJ Mid-Life Crisis

Back at the Metro this Sunday to play records with first time guest DJ Mid-Life Crisis, though he is certainly no stranger to the Metro. He has DJ’d there before as well as playing with numerous bands, most often with the Avant Gardeners. Starts at 4pm in the Theatre Bar as usual.

Wolfpanther vs DJ Southern Accents

Pubs are open again in Adelaide so back to the Metro for the monthly Sunday set this weekend. As usual I am joined by a guest DJ to play records one for one. This time it is DJ Southern Accents who has made a couple of appearances before and also is a regular on the Adelaide gig scene (when there was one). We also used to sing sea shanties together in a group called the Loose Cannons! We’ll just be playing records this weekend though.

Wolfpanther vs Cool Jumper

Going to start posting details of guests for my regular Hotel Metro Sunday arvo DJ set here as I want to stop relying on FB for this. I know that nobody reads blogs anymore but hardly anybody goes to my DJ sets either so that’s probably OK. First Sunday of the month I invite a guest to bring in some records and we take turns playing them one for one. For the November edition this weekend the guest is DJ Cool Jumper who as well as being a returning guest with me at the Metro is also commonly at the Metro or Golden Wattle behind the mixing desk, has a long history mixing lots of great shows and being the recording engineer behind many of my favourite Adelaide albums. I never would have managed my couple of years running Metro Experimental Night without his work on it either. He now runs his own Electric Ant Studios (https://citymag.indaily.com.au/culture/electric-ant-studios-and-the-unique-advantage-of-making-music-in-adelaide/). He has also played in bands including Wireheads, Box Elder and with me in Wind Commissioner.
Expect lots of indie rock with plenty of Adelaide and other Australian representation but probably a good chance of some Pavement too.

This Sunday November 1st from 4pm until 7pm or when we’ve had enough.

The Greens in the 2018 Victorian Election

The resignation of Richard DiNatale from the Senate and need for the preselection of a replacement prompted me to go back and reconsider the 2018 Victorian state election results as it seemed that some unsuccessful candidates there might be candidates for the Senate seat.
As it turned out I got sidetracked and didn’t finish the post until the preselection was over and won by Lidia Thorpe.

The basic story of the election was the the Greens lost a lot of seats, and some have used that so suggest a big loss of electoral support for the Greens, however a look at the percentages does not support this idea, so a more nuanced view is required.

This is not an attempt to paint it as some sort of good result, there was a decline in vote and the Greens failed to turn their gains in 2014 into an increase in vote. However there is some important context. A strategy of trying to win lower house seats has generally been successful and may have come at the cost of upper house seats, and furthermore Group Voting Tickets and preference deals put the Greens at a disadvantage in the upper house.

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Strategic Voting – the positives and negatives

In the leadup to the 2019 Federal Election there was quite a bit of talk of strategic voting. At the time I wanted to write about it but was a bit busy, now that I do have time it’s no longer of much interest but at least I’ll have it here ready for when it does come around again.
Since it was mostly discussed in terms of supporting conservative independents to defeat Liberals then I will use this situation to give concrete examples, however the same principles can apply in any appropriate circumstances regardless of the parties involved.

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Another Double Dissolution?

It looks like the Coalition government is going to have a narrow majority and I have already seen calls for a double dissolution (DD) election. I remember that this sort of thing started up after the Coalition won in 2013, and I never quite saw why people wanted it. It seemed to just be code for “new election now” but also with some sort of magical expectation that it would give them the result they want ie. not a coalition government. In reality, there is no reason why a new election soon after the last one should give a substantially different result.
In fact, now that we’ve had a DD election in recent memory I thought this sort of thing would stop, but it hasn’t.
There is no reason to expect a DD, this would have to be called by the Liberals because they think there is an advantage in it, and they would need a trigger so it’s not happening until well into the term anyway. I think a lot of times people are thinking more along the lines of the Whitlam dismissal but there were very particular circumstances there.

It also seems to be prompted by the small majority in the house, however, Labor a long way from the numbers to form Government, if the Liberals did lose any members to court challenges (e.g. in Chisolm) or defections or by-elections, then they would still have the support at least half of the cross bench. Even if they did lose that support, there is no reason to expect a DD election.

Anyway, despite all this, I thought I would have a look at another reason why a DD is not an attractive proposition – what would the senate look like?

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