Monthly Archives: March 2022

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On the surface, it is difficult to see what purpose is served by the new Liberal-NDP alliance or supply and confidence agreement, to give it its proper name for all the attention it has attracted. Its a bit like the metaverse: you know youre supposed to be excited by it, but damned if you can say why, or even quite what it is.

Supposedly the agreement commits the Liberals to certain pieces of legislation dear to the NDP, in exchange for the NDPs promise to keep the Liberals in power until 2025: that is, they will vote with the government on budget bills (supply) and other matters of confidence. But the Liberals dont need the NDPs votes to remain in power the numbers in the House are such that they can govern with the support of any one of the three main opposition parties and in any case the NDP were not about to vote to defeat the government, with or without an agreement.

For their part, the Liberals would hardly need to have their arms twisted to enact most of the policies on dental care, pharmaceuticals, a bank tax and so on to which they have now agreed. Some of them were even in the Liberal platform. So its mostly an agreement for each to do what it would have done anyway or not, as the case may be. Deals between political parties, after all, are not like deals in the real world. They are only binding until they arent until one side or the other decides it does not want to abide by them any more.

Whats the point, then? If neither side needs what they supposedly get from the deal, what do they really get from it? What do they really need? Start with the NDP. It isnt the government that needs to be protected from an election. Its the NDP. Or rather since the government can still call one at any time, the provision of the Elections Act forbidding such calls notwithstanding it needs to to be protected from election speculation. It needs to take the whole idea of an election off the table.

Why? Every minority Parliament is an extended game of chicken. In this particular minority Parliament, the game is not so much between the government and the opposition since all three opposition parties would have to vote to defeat the government at the same time, the governments hold on power is actually quite secure as it is between the opposition parties.

You can see it being played each time there is a confidence vote, such as after a budget. One or other of the parties will rush to the microphones to announce its intention to vote against the government, in hopes of putting its rivals on the spot. Do they want to be responsible, as it will be perceived, for bringing down the government, and most likely precipitating another election?

No one wants an election just now, of course. The problem for the NDP is that, of all the parties, it wants an election least of all and all the other parties know it. After three elections in six years, without the fundraising capacity of its larger rivals, the party simply cannot afford another one any time soon.

So the likelihood was that, some time in the coming months, and again and again over the remainder of this Parliament, the NDP would be put in the humiliating position of being, in effect, the last one to the mike: forced to prop up the government, over and over, for no reason other than because it was too scared not to. Whereas now it can say its because we are bound by the terms of our agreement. We did it for dental care.

They may find, however, that this amounts to burning the furniture to heat the house. For when the election finally does come, what will be left of the partys brand? How will the New Democrats differentiate themselves from the Liberals, having transferred title to some of their signature policies to them?

For their part, the Liberals are also using the agreement to satisfy a short-term need again, at potential cost to their longer-term position. The short-term need is not to ensure they can pass legislation that is not in doubt, for the reasons given but to insulate themselves from parliamentary inquiries into matters the Liberals would rather not discuss: for example, the sudden dismissal of two Chinese scientists from a top-security infectious disease laboratory in Winnipeg.

You will recall the government went so far as to sue the Speaker of the House before the last election rather than yield to Parliaments demands for documents related to the affair. Ultimately, the only weapon Parliament has to enforce its will upon the government is to vote no confidence in it, or to threaten to. The credibility of any such threat would now appear to be very much in doubt.

There is, as I say, a cost to this insurance: by aligning themselves so closely to the left-leaning NDP, the Liberals risk giving up the centre ground to the Conservatives. That, however, assumes the Conservatives have the wit to seize it. The Liberals may be calculating that the Tories have become so toxic to moderate voters as to make the gamble worthwhile: that they can expand to their left and still hold onto the centre.

Whether that proves to be the case will be decided, in part, by the Conservative leadership race. On the tenuous assumption that the Liberal-NDP pact makes an early election call less likely, the race will now be informed by two additional considerations: that whoever is elected will not have to be ready for a general election the day they become leader, but will have some time to prepare; and that by the time the election finally does roll around, they may be facing someone other than Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader.

Perhaps that may even cause one or more potential candidates to reconsider their decision: either to stay out of the race, or to enter it.

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Opinion: The Liberal-NDP deal: short-term gain for long-term pain? - The Globe and Mail

Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada are no friends of labor. It is therefore strange that the same government that has had no qualms about repressing strikes by postal and port workers is now signaling a willingness to support an anti-scab bill in Canadas House of Commons. A new confidence and supply deal between the Liberals and the New Democratic Party (NDP), which will keep the Liberals in power until 2025 in exchange for support on key NDP priorities, contains a commitment to table a ban on scabs next year.

An anti-scab law would prohibit employers from using replacement workers to keep their workplaces operating during a strike or lockout. Replacement worker bans typically prevent employers from hiring new workers once collective bargaining begins. They also block employers from assigning employees from another part of their business to perform the work of striking union members.

What form a Liberal government anti-scab law might take remains an open question. Prior to last falls election, Trudeau and the Liberals vacillated on the issue. In 2009, while in the opposition, Trudeau voted in favor of the failed anti-scab legislation introduced by the sovereigntist Bloc Qubcois (BQ). Since forming government in 2015, however, the Liberals have voted down NDP anti-scab bills.

In their fall 2021 electoral platform, however, the Liberals committed to introducing their own anti-scab legislation. This uncharacteristic proposal was very carefully worded. Rather than prohibit the use of replacement workers during all work stoppages, the Liberals only appear willing to ban scabs during employer-initiated lockouts. Given that roughly 85 percent of work stoppages in Canada are strikes, confining the ban to lockouts would make it all but meaningless.

In keeping with the Liberal commitment to maximalist rhetoric and minimalist action, the details of the plan are far less inspiring than the headline. Labor and the Left should seize this opportunity and push the Liberals to implement a robust version of anti-scab legislation.

In Canada, provincial governments have primary responsibility for labor and employment law. Outside of the federal public service, few private industries fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government. Federal legislative responsibility is largely limited to sectors which cross provincial or international borders, industries deemed to be in the national interest, and Crown Corporations.

Federal labor legislation thus has relatively limited reach. The Canada Labour Code governs the employment of approximately 910,000 workers in air, rail, and interprovincial road transportation; banking and telecommunications; some mining and natural resource extraction; postal services; ports and international shipping; as well as some First Nations government workplaces.

However, workers in Canadas federal jurisdiction are somewhat uniquely situated to benefit from an anti-scab law. Compared to those whose labor is regulated provincially, firms in the federal jurisdiction enjoy some forms of market protection and are much less subject to foreign and domestic competition. The jurisdiction is also characterized by a greater proportion of large firms and higher union density than is the case across the provinces. As of 2018, 82 percent of federally regulated employees worked for firms employing a hundred or more people. Private sector union density nationwide stands at roughly 16 percent, but it is over 34 percent among workers employed by federally regulated private firms.

All these factors could make passing a federal anti-scab law more feasible. Small employer hostility to the bill would likely be negligible. And the effects of the bill could potentially impact a greater number of union members than comparable legislation might in any of the provinces where it is currently lawful to hire scabs.

At present, only British Columbia and Quebec ban scabs in their respective provincial labor relations codes. At the federal level, the Canada Labour Code currently allows employers to freely hire replacement workers. However, the scab hires must not be used to undermine the representational capacity of the union. Further, scab hires are not granted employment ahead of union members when a work stoppage ends.

Beginning in 2017, the federal government committed to making various reforms to federal labor law. They convened an Expert Panel on Modern Labour Standards to recommend reforms for nonunion employees, and have since reintroduced a $15 per hour federal minimum wage, limited employee misclassification, and provided long-service employees with more paid vacation time.

In December 2021, the Liberals belatedly passed a bill, with NDP and BQ support, granting federally regulated workers ten paid sick days annually. The ensuing consultation process overlong and still ongoing has almost certainly been arranged to give employers ample time to partially defang the legislation by influencing its regulatory implementation.

As in other capitalist democracies, strike activity in Canada is at a historic low. The vast majority some 95 percent of collective bargaining rounds are completed successfully without a work stoppage. Strike levels have fallen precipitously since their high point in the early 1980s. Over the past decade, there have been roughly a hundred fifty average annual work stoppages nationwide, across all firm sizes. The story is much the same in the federal private sector where the proposed ban on scabs would apply. The last time there were more than fifteen federal work stoppages was 1987.

Interestingly, while the number of annual strikes has gone down, the average length of strikes has risen. Over the past ten years, average strike duration has increased by two and a half times. In short, unions are striking far less frequently and employers feel emboldened to wait workers out for longer.

In the context of growing inequality and inflation that is outstripping wages, low levels of strike activity dont indicate a well-functioning collective bargaining regime, but rather union weakness. To what degree would a federal anti-scab law help reverse this trend?

Historically, hiring scabs has been one of the most provocative actions a boss can take during a strike. In many instances, a picket line that successfully halts or substantially impedes production can be the determining factor in a job action. By allowing employers to legally replace striking workers, union leverage is diminished. It is therefore reasonable to assume that a ban on scabs would incentivize employers to bargain in good faith.

Employer use of scabs can also increase the likelihood of violence on picket lines, generating tension in communities experiencing a strike or lockout and harming long-term labor relations. Moreover, employers frequently hire private security firms and obtain court injunctions to ensure scabs are able to enter struck workplaces without union interference.

However, scab bans are not beneficial to bosses and pretending otherwise is foolish. In the past, some anti-scab proponents, including unions and labor centrals, have lobbied for a scab ban by emphasizing its potential to reduce the number of days lost to labor disputes. On this question, the evidence is mixed. For example, in the two years after anti-scab laws were introduced in British Columbia and Quebec, the number of strikes increased, though average duration shrank. From labors perspective, this is a desirable outcome. But we shouldnt expect that employers or Liberal governments will consider it to be supportive evidence.

That said, it is true that anti-scab bills can aid in industrial peace. Strikes and lockouts that turn into bitter, protracted standoffs often provoked by an employer that is determined to impose drastically inferior conditions of employment or even entirely break a union could likely be prevented by a strong anti-scab law.

In May 2021, Unifor (formerly the Canadian Auto Workers) launched a nationwide campaign for anti-scab legislation. According to the union, when employers used scabs against Unifor members, the average work stoppage lasted 265 days; when no scabs were involved, the average length was just 42 days. Although Unifors experience is not necessarily representative, it is a good benchmark to look to.

There is no one-stop panacea to reverse the historic weakness of Canadian labor, but a strong federal anti-scab law would doubtlessly increase the bargaining power of affected unions. Legislation that strictly prohibits scabs, protects workers who honor picket lines, and imposes steep fines on contravening employers could go some distance is reviving the efficacy of strikes.

Admittedly, anti-scab laws are necessitated by North American labor relations systems which substantially restrict the ability of unions to strike. There is a reason why Scandinavian labor law doesnt ban scabs: high union density, a greater willingness to strike, and a relatively more permissive legal regime make employers think twice about bringing in replacements. North American unions, on the other hand, look to the state to legislate what they themselves cant impose in practice. Even so, a federal ban on scabs would be a significant win for Canadian unions and could set an important precedent for those provinces that still allow employers to temporarily replace striking workers.

The Liberals recent confidence deal with the NDP makes the partys vague promise of anti-scab legislation a real possibility. But in order to ensure that a ban on scabs has teeth, unions will need to be prepared. We can expect the Liberals to propose an anti-scab bill that will be far weaker than past NDP versions. Organized labor and the federal NDP will have to guard against this. In the event that scabs are successfully banned in Canadas federal private sector, it will be up to labor to capitalize on the victory.

See original here:

Trudeau's Liberals Will Require Pressure to Make Good on Their Anti-Scab Bill - Jacobin magazine

The left-right divide over Covid-19 with blue America taking the virus more seriously than red America has never been the pandemics only political divide. Each partisan tribe has also had its internal disagreements.

Republicans have long been split over vaccination, with many eagerly getting shots while many others refuse. Democrats have their own growing schism, between those who believe Covid precautions should continue to be paramount and those who favor moves toward normalcy.

The key dividing line appears to be ideology. Americans who identify as very liberal are much more worried about Covid than Americans who identify as somewhat liberal or liberal. Increasingly, the very liberal look like outliers on Covid: The merely liberal are sometimes closer to moderates than to the very liberal.

That is a central finding of a poll conducted last week by Morning Consult for this newsletter. The poll is a follow-up to one from January. This time, to go deeper than partisan identification, we asked respondents to choose one of seven labels: very liberal, liberal, slightly liberal, moderate, slightly conservative, conservative or very conservative.

Why does political ideology so strongly shape Covid beliefs?

Donald Trump certainly plays a role. As president, he repeatedly made false statements downplaying Covid. Many Republican voters adopted his view, while many liberal Democrats went in the other direction. They came to equate any loosening of Covid restrictions with Trumpism, even after vaccines tamed the viruss worst effects.

But I dont think Trump is the only explanation. Every group of Democrats disdains him, yet Democrats disagree about Covid. Apart from Trump, the pandemic seems to be tapping into different views of risk perception.

Very liberal Americans make up almost 10 percent of adults, according to our poll and others. Many are younger than 50 and have a four-year college degree. They span all races but are disproportionately white, the Pew Research Center has found.

In recent years, these progressive professionals have tended to adopt a cautious approach to personal safety. You might even call it conservative.

It is especially notable in child rearing. Parents seek out the healthiest food, sturdiest car seats and safest playgrounds. They do not let their children play tackle football, and they worry about soccer concussions. The sociologist Annette Lareau has described the upper-middle-class parenting style as concerted cultivation and contrasted it with a working-class style of natural growth.

A cautious approach to personal safety has big benefits. It has helped popularize bicycle helmets, for example. In the case of Covid, very liberal Americans have been eloquent advocates for protecting the elderly and immunocompromised and for showing empathy toward the unvaccinated.

Yet the approach also has downsides. It can lead people to obsess over small, salient risks while ignoring bigger ones. A regimented childhood, with scheduled lessons replacing unstructured neighborhood play time, may lead to fewer broken bones, but it does not necessarily maximize creativity, independence or happiness.

When it comes to Covid, there is abundant evidence that the most liberal Americans are exaggerating the risks to the vaccinated and to children.

Consider that Democrats younger than 45 are more likely to say the virus poses a great risk to them than those older than 65 are which is inconsistent with scientific reality but consistent with younger Democrats more intense liberalism. Or consider that many liberals (including Sonia Sotomayor) feel deep anxiety about Covids effects on children even though the flu kills more children in a typical year and car crashes kill about five times as many. Long Covid, similarly, appears to be rare in both children and vaccinated people.

The truth is that the vast majority of severe Covid illness is occurring among those Americans who have chosen not to be vaccinated and boosted.

I know that this newsletters emphasis on liberals Covid fears has angered some people. And I understand why many Americans including some moderates and conservatives, as our poll shows remain so focused on the virus. It has dominated daily life for more than two years, and some risk remains. Shifting gears is hard.

But trying to eliminate Covid risk, and allowing the virus to distort daily life, has costs, too. Thats why much of Europe, which is hardly a bastion of Trumpism, has stopped trying to minimize caseloads.

The American focus on Covids dangers, by contrast, has caused disruption and isolation that feed educational losses, mental health troubles, drug overdoses, violent crime and vehicle crashes. These damages have fallen disproportionately on low-income, Black and Latino Americans, exacerbating inequality in ways that would seem to violate liberal values.

Rather than eliminating the risk of Covid, youve got to manage the risk, Elizabeth H. Bradley, a public health expert and the president of Vassar College, told me recently. If you really go for minimizing the risk, youre going to have unintended consequences to peoples physical health, their mental health, their social health.

She added: Its Public Health 101.

Many Americans seem to have adopted this view. But there are still holdouts.

More on the virus:

Russian forces remain stalled outside Kyiv, taking heavy casualties. The Ukrainian military yesterday claimed to have shot down 10 Russian planes and cruise missiles.

Russia does control large sections of eastern and southern Ukraine. Many cities there are desolate and ruined: There is no one to bury the dead, an official said.

This morning, Russian missiles struck the outskirts of the western city of Lviv, which had been a haven, its mayor said.

In Mariupol, a southern city that hasnt fallen, rescuers are pulling survivors from a bombed theater. The death toll is unclear.

The House voted to allow higher tariffs on Russian goods. The bill now moves to the Senate.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the U.S. would punish China if it gave Russia military aid.

Russias stumbles in Ukraine reveal the weaknesses of autocracies, says David Brooks.

Michelle Goldberg profiles Peter Marki-Zay, the Hungarian politician trying to unseat Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Elena Ferrante, the pseudonymous author of the Neapolitan novels and more, has published a collection of lectures about writing and reading. Here are a few takeaways:

She kept a notebook as a teenager. The writer, her young self wrote, has a duty to put into words the shoves he gives and those he receives from others.

She balances tidiness with disorder. Love stories become interesting to Ferrante at the moment when a character falls out of love; mysteries gain intrigue when she understands that the puzzle wont be solved, The Timess Molly Young writes.

Shes a rereader. To read a book is to absorb, consciously or not, all the other books that influenced that book, as well as the books that influenced those books, and so on; to interpret even one paragraph on a page is to vector endlessly back in time, Molly writes.

More here:

Covid and the 'Very Liberal' - The New York Times

A proposal in the new Liberal-NDP agreement to create a national dental care program for low-income Canadians could deliver the largest expansion of Canada's public health care system in decades.

"It is a matter of dignity," NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said Tuesday. "This will make a massive difference for health and for people's quality of life."

The dealto create a dental program is part of the new Liberal-NDP "supply-and-confidence" agreement. The agreement will see the New Democratssupport the minority Liberal governmenton confidence votes until 2025 in exchange for action on several NDPpriorities.

The NDP campaigned on a promise of a national dental care program during Singh's two elections as party leader, but previous Liberal governments never moved on the project.

Here is what we know so far about the dental plan how it would function, how much it would costand the effect it could have on the roughly6.5 million Canadians who don'thave dental coverage now.

Under the program, families with annual incomes of less than $90,000 lackingdental insurance would be eligible for coverage.

Anyone making less than $70,000 annually also would not have to make co-pays the flat rate fee which otherwise can be charged each time a person makes a claim. Dental fees would be fully covered bythe government for any person or family with an income under $70,000.

The proposal is nearly identical to the policy plank inNDP platforms for the 2019 and 2021 elections.

The system would function along the lines ofprivate insurance plans. The plandoes not call for specific investments in health care infrastructure or for workers to support the needs of dentalpatients.

About 6.5 million Canadians are believed to be eligible for the plan. Thatfigure is projected to decrease slightly to 6.3 million by 2025 due to demographic shifts and improving labour market conditions.

The plan is tobe phased in over three years before theLiberal-NDP agreement expires in 2025.

Starting later this year, children under 12 would become eligible for the program.

In 2023, the coverage would be extended to 18-year-olds, seniors and people living with disabilities.

The program would be fully implemented by 2025 under the proposed timeline.

Laura Tamblyn Watts, founder and CEO of the senior advocacy group CanAge, said the program would make a "huge difference" in the lives of seniors who don't have coverage and can't afford dental care.

"Older adults desperately need the access to dental care that right now we don't have consistently across this country," she said.

Watts said Canadian seniors without dental coverage often turn to hospital emergency rooms when experiencing dental issues.

"We know that ERs are overwhelmingly the country's dentists of seniors and thatshould not be the case," she said.

The price tagcould be revealed in the federal budget expectedin early April, but previous NDP proposals alreadyhave been examined and costed.

An analysis by the Parliamentary Budget Officerin 2020 estimated the cost of a similar program at $1.3 billion over the year following the plan's announcement, and $4.3 billion during the first year of the plan's operation. The program would then cost about $1.5 billion annually until 2025.

The much higher cost in the program's first year is based on the expectation that people with unmet dental needs would seek care when they become eligible.

But the new proposal calls for the program to be phased in over several years, which could change prior cost projections.

"While it will cost a little more on the front end, it will save money on the back end and make life more affordable," said Armine Yalnizyan, an economist serving as the Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers.

"I know that people are going to say, 'Why are we spending money?' But that's being penny-wise and pound-foolish."

Conservative interim leader Candice Bergen said the Liberal-NDP agreement will lead to reckless spending during a time of economicuncertainty.

"Some Liberals have told me they're very worried about the economic direction under the Justin Trudeau government," she said on Tuesday. "I can't imagine how they're feeling now that they have a Jagmeet Singh-led government in charge."

Read the original here:

Everything we know about the Liberal-NDP dental care proposal - CBC News

Among the more bizarre and gruesome rites of ancient Rome was the practice of killing an animal in order to examine its entrails.

The purpose of this sanguinary custom, known as "haruspicy", was not diagnostic, but to enable divination. Like those who seek revelation in tea-leaves, palm lines or the stars, the Romans believed that an animal's internal organs could offer insights into human destiny.

The consultation of oracles might not, at the moment, be foremost among the intentions of SA Liberal apparatchiks, but few observers would dispute that their party has just undergone electoral evisceration.

Four years after finally breaking Labor's stranglehold on power, the Liberals find themselves again in opposition and again in the political wilderness.

They are now in a predicament potentially worse than the aftermath of the infamous Rannslide of 2006, when Mike Rann was emphatically re-elected as premierand the Liberals occupied just 15 of the 47 seats in parliament's lower house.

At the time, political analyst Dean Jaensch wrote presciently of the impediments to Liberal unitythat would trouble the party during Mr Rann's term in office.

Jaensch notedthe Liberals' inability to resolve their chronic internecine hostilities:

"The party has to face a complete restructure, from the foundations up. And for that to occur, the factions will have to work together. On the basis of 40 years of internal warfare, that will require a miracle."

Over the next few years, the Liberals busily set about vindicating Jaensch's predictions, holding several leadership spills that demonstratedthat a diminished presence in parliament is not necessarily a deterrent to factionalrancour.

It wasn't always this way. In fact, during themiddle decades of the 20th century, the central question confronting members of the Liberal Country League (the precursor of the modern Liberals) was not how they would gain power, but how they might lose it.

Party leader Thomas Playford's 26-year reign, from late 1938 to early 1965, remains a record for an Australian premier.

Nicknamed "honest Tom", Playford was able to achieve such longevity by what were arguably dishonest means. A gerrymander, dubbed the "Playmander", gifted rural seats disproportionate electoral power. Playford himself did not devise the gerrymander, but nor did he repeal it, and it was not until he left office that the system was finally abolished by Liberal premier Steele Hall.

More than five decadeshave elapsed since the watershed 1970 election the first of the post-Playmander era, and the first of the so-called Dunstan Decade. Since the reform, the Liberals have won only four of 16 state elections, andheld office for less than a third of the time.

No Liberal premier has won two elections, let alone consecutive ones, since Playford himself last did it more than 60 years ago.

The question of why this is the case is an urgent one for Liberal strategistsas they prepare to inspect the entrails in the hope of uncovering clues about what went wrongand how to avoid it happening again.

Recrimination is an unedifying subject,but, within the remaining ranks of the SA Liberals, there will be much of it in the weeks ahead.

A year ago, Steven Marshall seemed a veritable shoo-in for a second term as premier: COVID-19 management had gifted him a formidable platform from which to plot a return to office.

Labor MPs would have been forgiven for privately dismissing the 2022 election as likely unwinnable, and instead postponing any optimism until 2026.

So what changed?

One obvious factor was COVID, specifically the Omicron variant. Those in search of a decisivemoment might do worse than selectingNovember 23, 2021 the day that SA's eastern borders reopened, allowing the virus back in.

As case numbers rose, Liberal popularity seemed to decline accordingly. Ironically, while they could not achieve unity within their own ranks, the Liberals did manage to unify their enemies during this time: voices of very different persuasions on issues such as social restrictions and vaccination formed a loose "coalition of contempt", united by fury towards the government's Omicron strategy.

Single-term governments occupy an awkward place in history books and in the popular consciousness.

For this reason, staunch Labor supporters may be inclined to unkindly deride the Marshall government as little more than an anomaly.

In certain respects, Labor's return to office represents a resumption rather than a renaissance: prominent MPs Tom Koutsantonis, Stephen Mullighan, Susan Close, Katrine Hildyard, Zoe Bettison, Kyam Maher and Chris Picton have all previously held ministerial portfolios.

The elephant in the room or in the ambulance is the matter of ramping, and the role played by the paramedics' union in the Liberals' defeat. The Ambulance Employees' Association became living proof of Billy Bragg's lyric, "there is power in a union".

Over its four years in office, the Marshall government presided over a grave deterioration on the ramping front.

During the election campaign, Labor and the AEA which remained locked in industrial dispute with the Marshall administrationuntil the bitter end waged a relentless war of attrition over ramping, leaving the government moribund.

Campaign warfare, however, is only one part of the pictureand it is not the most important part. For there are deeper reasons as to why the Liberals imploded in Saturday's ballot. Happily, history can help us understand them.

In November 1996, less than a year out from an election, Liberal premier Dean Brown was ousted by factional rival John Olsen in a leadership spill. Mr Brownhad swept to powerin a Liberal landslidethree years earlier, withthe collapse of the State Bankensuringan end toLabor rule after 11 years.

The 1996 partyroom coup was the latest instalment of an intergenerational drama in which moderate and conservative Liberal factions adopting the roles of sworn enemies locked in self-destructive life-or-death struggle put their own fortunes ahead of their common interests.

Several ideological incongruities characterise this factional fissure. Moderates have tended to be reformist and socially liberal, and in favour of law change on matters such as euthanasia. Conservatives are believers in the value of tradition, and are often churchgoers. If not necessarily holding rural seats, they nevertheless are more closely associated with rural interests.

These internal antagonisms have festered within the party for years, and the Marshall government's attempts to resolve or quell them failed spectacularly. By the end, three MPs who had started their terms in 2018 as Liberals Sam Duluk, Fraser Ellis and Dan Cregan had migrated to the crossbench, leaving Mr Marshall at the helm of a minority government.

Admittedly,the departuresof Mr Duluk and Mr Ellis werenot of their own volition, but because of criminal charges being laid (Mr Duluk was later acquitted, while Mr Ellis who was among several MPsinvestigated as part of the country members' travel allowance scandal has not yetfaced trial).But it remains significant thatall three of the dissident MPs had been affiliated with the party's conservative wing.

Mr Cregan precipitated one of the more extraordinary sessions of state parliament when, after quitting the Liberals, heseized the speakership and emerged as a hostile MP. It is indicative of the disaffection among erstwhile Liberal voters that Mr Cregan and Mr Ellis have both been re-elected as independent MPs, with significant swings towards them.

Mr Cregan's defection was not a case of deserting a sinking ship, but a far more paradoxical phenomenon: that of a man helping to sink a ship by jumping overboard.

The act occurred only a few months after the Liberal Party had denied memberships to hundreds of applicants who were evangelical Christians. Characterised by moderates as an attempt to counter branch stacking, the move was instead described by federal conservative Nicolle Flint as the "most extraordinary and undemocratic act" in her time in politics.

"The party was, in the view of many, hijacked by the moderates back in 2013 when Steven Marshall and Vickie Chapman took over as leader and deputy," Martin Hamilton-Smith a former Liberal opposition leader and conservative defector told the ABC in September.

"Since then, conservatives have been sidelined, ushered out the door, marginalised."

But this is only half of the story, becausethe casualties weren't only on the conservative side of the ledger. The biggest of all was deputy premier Vickie Chapman, a moderate and an ally of Mr Marshall. In November, she relinquished her portfolios amid an ombudsman's investigation into her decision as planning minister to refuse a port on Kangaroo Island.

A month before this transpired, the premier had been subjected to parliamentary attack from Labor over the unrelated and seemingly trivial matter of whether it had been appropriate to allow a film crew into the Royal Adelaide Hospital, to make a video about its haematologyunit, at a time of significant ramping. In response, Mr Marshall quipped:

"Last time I looked, we weren't running blood-management units out of the Liberal Party in South Australia. Maybe some blood-letting."

It was a flippant remark that was said with a smilebutnow seems ominous. Just as there is nothing wrong with losing allies if you are recruiting them in equal numbers, blood loss matters less if it is countered by transfusion. But no party can withstand uncontrolled haemorrhaging.

Mr Marshall has already committed to quitting his position as Liberal leader, should he manage to hold the seat of Dunstan. What confronts his successor is a messy and bloody businessand it will take a person of rare staminato stomach it, entrails and all.

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SA election 2022: The Playmander, the Rannslide and the roots of Liberal implosion - ABC News

Politicians often say every seat matters in an election, so it's jarring to see several key electorates without candidates just days out from a campaign.

This isn't normal. Candidates do sometimes drop out. Some are hit with scandals. But these are normally isolated cases unlike the rump of winnable seats currently without Liberal candidates.

Much of this is due to a factional battle between three groups in the New South Wales Liberal Party that has held back pre-selections for cabinet minister Sussan Ley, moderate Trent Zimmerman and the Prime Minister's numbers-man Alex Hawke.

These preselections are now secured and the seats are safe.

The bigger problem is missing candidates in seats like Lilley (on a margin of 0.6 per cent), Eden-Monaro (0.9 per cent), Greenway (2.8 per cent), Parramatta (3.5 per cent) or contestable seats like Warringah (7.2 per cent), Jagajaga (5.9 per cent) and Bennelong (6.9 per cent).

"What's remarkable is there are a couple of government seats they need to defend like Bennelong, where they haven't picked a candidate, or Hughes, where Craig Kelly is running for the United Australia Party," ABC election analyst Antony Green said.

"And then there are marginal Labor seats like Parramatta and Greenway that are still vacant.

"If you're trying to win a seat or hold a marginal seat you'd be wanting to campaign for months and have your name out there around shopping centres, and at this stage, the best the Liberal party can do is put out a generic leaflet as there's no candidate they can name."

Candidates may be announced for these seats before the election is called, but the delay means less time to boost name recognition, raise moneyand campaign.

"The personal vote of sitting members is a little overstated sometimes, but it still can be worth up to 3 per cent in an urban seat," Mr Green said.

Labor is more organised in comparison but there are still some notable omissions.

It has no confirmed candidate in Parramatta where Julie Owens is retiring, although former Rudd advisor Andrew Charlton is likely to be pre-selected.

The party has no candidate to replace the retiring Antony Byrne in the Victorian seat of Holt and there's also no candidate in Bennelong. But most marginal seats are covered.

The Labor preselection process is also not without controversy.

A decision to parachute Kristina Keneally into the western Sydney seat of Fowler at the expense of local Vietnamese-Australian lawyer Tu Le was criticised at the time.

The Sydney Morning Herald revealed similar criticism over a push to install Mr Charlton, who has a $16 million home in Sydney's eastern suburbs, in Parramatta.

Local Labor members have told the ABC it is a "slap in the face" for the local multicultural community.

Not all Liberal headaches are due to factional jostling or delays.

In Lilley, candidate Ryan Shaw withdrew to focus on his mental health.

But it has played a role in seats like Warringah, where the Liberals preferred candidate reportedly resigned after an impasse on pre-selections.

Some marginal seats like Dobell (1.5 per cent) have only been filled in recent weeks, leaving only a short time to boost name recognition in the community.

The last day for candidates to be nominated for a seat is as soon as 10 days after the writs for an election are issued.

Read more here:

Several winnable federal seats missing Liberal and Labor candidates, days before expected election campaign - ABC News