Morgan’s fortnightly face-to-face survey of 1667 voters has Labor significantly widening its two-party lead, from 55-45 to 58.5-41.5. The Coalition primary vote is down from 40.5 per cent to 36.5 per cent, while Labor’s is up from 47 per cent to 49.5 per cent. In all respects, this represents a return to the state of play from the early part of the year after two relatively good results for the Coalition in July, when their primary vote topped 40 per cent for the first time since November.
Does anyone know if Howard can call an election after APEC but have it held before the next inflation figures are out – I don’t know when they are due other than mid-to-late October. Given what the Reserve Bank Governor said today, if inflation stays high as the last set of figures it looks pretty certain that interest rates would go up, so Howard might want to get the election out of the way before the inflation announcement, not just the next Reserve Bank Board meeting after the inflation announcement.
I have always thought the he could not have an election campaign during APEC anyway because of the Caretaker Conventions: he could not commit the government to anything, but if he calls it first week after APEC, he might have the election before the inflation figures are out.
I sympathise Glen. In the last 25 years I’ve lived in North Sydney, Sydney and Grayndler, in that order. I’ve never even received a flyer in my letterbox, let alone had a hospital bought for me.
Democracy, the least worst system.
i cant believe these figures-pure nonsense really fiction
i mean i cant believe even 41.5% would vote for the coalition
🙁
Bungs the RBA meets on the 7th of November…that’s why Howard will go to the polls on the 3rd of November…im guessing so as to go before a possible rise in rates…
Glen (33), I live in Macquarie, so we’ve suddenly gone from being a reasonably safe seat to one of the most marginal in the country, which is fun. Funnily enough, though, we haven’t been getting much electoral spam from either side yet: Kerry Bartlett sent out a mass mailing – taxpayer-funded, of course – chastising state Labor for allegedly planning to close a small local hospital, but that’s about it from him. Bob Debus has run a few ads in the local rag with the tagline ‘Experience Counts’, focusing on his long series of ministerial positions at state level.
Rob (44), I agree that there’s no real evidence that people care about an inexperienced front bench. In 1996 barely anyone on Howard’s front bench had been a minister, didn’t stop the Coalition winning by a landslide. It’s also worth pointing out that when Howard, Keating and Costello became Treasurer they’d all been in parliament for a reasonably short period of time and had minimal (and in the case of Costello, no) ministerial experience, so it doesn’t seem a very significant issue.
pondie84 Says: I live in Eden-Monaro. I’d assume my vote is pretty important.
Lucky you… I live in Higgins.
Steve, you can’t fool me, you’re doing a spoof on Shanahan’s method of interpreting polls. Or are you Shanahan by another name?
Crispy that’s the problem, you only win if you are in a marginal seat held by the Government you win big otherwise you get nothing…ive lived in Higgins, Curtin, Fremantle and Melbourne Ports in that order and i can also sympathise with you….
Never lived in a marginal seat in my life what a gip ah well democracy is the least worst system but at least my Senate vote still counts lol
The claim that Labor’s IR policy will reintroduce pattern bargaining is exactly that – a bald-faced lie. I know that you’re merely parroting the information , but nevertheless it’s a lie.
Now you know.
(Macquarie as well)
Paul K, that’s as credible as Steven Kaye’s take on the poll. How can you take anyone seriously who comes out with stuff like that honestly? Have the Young Liberals gone mad?
The problem for the government and their IR policy is that it’s impossible to sell the idea that for most to be better off a significant minority have to pay the price with lower wages and poorer conditions. Howard hasn’t said “noone will be worse off” for a very good reason. This will do him in.
The fact is any change in economic circumstances resulting in a downturn will show Workchoices in full bloom. Not a pretty sight. The fear factor will accentuate, not against Labor’s fairer system but against Workchoices.
Gary how do you get lower wages when wages have increased 20% by the Howard Government and decreased under the Keating Government by 1% and the ALP were lauding the fact that wages decreased under them…
So long as Howard can link Labor’s reckless IR policy with the damage it will do to the economy like a 1.4% rise in interest rates then he’ll minimise the damage.
At least with this poll it is doing what logic tells you would be the case when you have a rise in interest rates and trouble in the Liberal household. It makes sense to that degree. You can argue about the size of the shift but the shift itself rings true.
Wage increases have been in spite of the Howard government, not because of them. Now, WorkChoices is slowly hacking away at the wage rates of our poorest citizens.
And conservatives wonder why the Howard government is severly on the nose?
Glen, as long as Labor can link a lowering of conditions, a lowering of wages and show a job is less secure in some cases people will relate to this even though it doesn’t necessarily hit home to them. Tell me Glen show me the evidience that suggests the government’s IR laws are popular. Why have they spent 37 million of OUR money trying to convince us otherwise if it is popular? Why avoid using the name Workchoices, a name they coined? This is a dog of a policy and noone is being fooled by the ads.
Glen if what you’re arguing is wages will be lower under the ALP then how does this hold with the other argument that there will be a wage explosion, and therefore an upwards pressure on interest rates?
You either have to argue that wages would increase more than they have under this Government, or to accept that this Government wants peoples’ wage increases to be less.
If you want peoples’ wage increases to be less then that’s going to be hard to sell to the electorate in general.
Glen, sorry, the government’s IR campaign is nonsense, and hence a lie. Just as some of the ACTU ads were hyperbolic. I say this after 15 years spent studying IR laws, and knowing how little evidence there is to support the wild macro-economic claims the government is making.
The case for WorkChoices at best is that come a downturn, employers will be able to screw wages/conditions down more easily, and (perhaps) preserve some jobs that way. (The likelier overall response to a downturn, however is that employers with scale will restructure the jobs away, and employers with capital replace them with technology, as happens in EVERY recession).
Lies seem inevitable in a desperate, PR-athon election year. But they don’t cease to be distortions of any sensible policy debate.
The government is resorting to claims that make its own supporters blush. (Witness Max Moore-Wilton defending the states in today’s AFR by defending govt debt for infrastructure).
What is funny is that the government is It is dissembling to differentiate itself from Labor – though Labor is more popular.
Whereas Rudd is resorting to fibbing about his support for government policies – to avoid differentiation from an unpopular government!
Didn’t Peter Hendy, Liberal party operative, assist with that report? Can you point to the evidence for me Glen proving that what they say is correct? Would you accept a report from the Union movement showing the opposite. Think why not Glen and yuo’ll get why I have difficulty believing this report.
“…you cant have a mortgage or pay the rent if you dont have a job and whether you like it or not Rudd’s IR policy will cause a rise in unemployment its just plain dumb to have a policy that brings us back pre-1993 to patent bargaining its a joke…i know some people will vote against the Coalition because of workchoices but the fact is have wages gone down…no they’ve risen…have there been mass sackings no….has there been jobs growth yes.”
Glen, this is just the same flimsy rubbish, which is full of factual errors, that comes straight from Howard and his ministers. You’ve got to be kidding, surely?
For a start, Labor are not proposing a return to pattern bargaining, nor a return to pre-1993 IR policy.
Secondly, a correlation does not equal causality. We have seen jobs growth since WorkChoices arrived but we also saw plenty of jobs growth BEFORE it arrived. Just because WorkChoices and jobs growth have happened together does not mean that WorkChoices has suddenly brought about some kind of economic miracle. I mean, interest rates have also been rising since WorkChoices arrived. Are you prepared to say that WorkChoices has put upward pressure on interest rates?
And while wages have increased in AGGREGATE, once you take out the massive rises in the salaries for CEOs and upper management, I doubt the picture looks very pretty for the rest of the country.
It’s sad when people actually believe Howard’s lies.
34
Glen Says:
August 17th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Does anybody live in a marginal seat where their vote actually counts in the HoR instead of just the Senate?
I’m in Melbourne Ports, technically its marginal but it will never go to the Libs when the Greens poll 15% of the vote.
I’m in Moreton – not only is it marginal but the sitting member is still under investigation as a part of “Printgate”
It looks as though a minority of people a believing Howard’s lies.
Gary i do not doubt that many people many do find workchoices unpopular that’s a fact and i dont run away from that fact…
Graeme i agree with your assessment…that’s why ive myself a Liberal voter have railed against Howard for not bringing in a fairness test or no-disadvantage test…i think that was a costly mistake by John Howard and it will undoubtedly lose him votes come election day…
Howard fell into the trap…he should have had a no disadvantage test and scraped the unfair dismissal laws…but he didnt do that so thats where im not happy he could have made it seem less threatening then it is and that’s where he failed…
Nevertheless i am happy that he finally brought in a fairness test although it was too late to have any impact on the popularity of the Coalition’s IR reform…
The flip side is we dont know a whole lot about ‘Forward with Fairness’ and the ALP’s IR policy…we dont know about unfair dismissal we do know they’ll remove AWAs which is an ideological position purely and i think it will cost them votes in WA…having said that if the Coalition can find enough evidence to suggest Labor’s IR policy will hurt the economy then they have to run with it or risk looking weak on the issue.
So says Glen…
I hope Labor make plenty of mileage on the revelation in Howard’s biography that they imposed WorkChoices knowing it would make people worse off (though blind freddy would have been able to predict that). And to think that they did this in the midst of the longest ever boomtime. As Gary Bruce said, it’s a dog of a policy.
Labor should also highlight the sinister intent to impose WorkChoices MKII if they are re-elected, as foreshadowed by extremist Nick Minchin.
One (non-partisan) question: do people agree that the actions of the Govt. over the past 6 months are the most nakedly political, do-anything-to-get-elected in living memory?
If so, do you think this undisguised politiking will have an effect upon the voting public?
I live in Stirling and through my work I get to talk to lots of working mothers. My own straw poll has Howard in deep trouble, and by far the most common reason given for turfing the Government: Suddenly, shifts are being juggled around, and mums are having to work weekends. The Coalition loves to trumpet ‘Family Values’, but seems to have undermined them with Workchoices.
I live in Berowra(blue ribbon Liberal territory). My vote won’t make much difference in this neck of the woods, but it’s still satisfying putting Phil Ruddock last on my ballot paper.
The wages and prices accords ensured that our economy didn’t fall into stagflation, which is what occurred under Fraser with Howard as treasurer. Costello has made a mistake of not investing in things which increase productivity and the capacity of the economy, which is why our interest rates have been rising while the rates in the U.S. have been falling.
Plus WorkChoices doesn’t help, because workers with less pay and less conditions won’t be as productive. WorkChoices just makes it easier for workers to get sacked if the economy enteres a down turn. I can’t see how that helps the governments campaign.
Can someone tell me the maximun number of employees a small business can have to be exempt from the re-introduction of unfair dismissal by Rudd . May have to downsize a bit before he is elected to avoid it!
Has it been much different to the lead up to the 2001 and 2004 elections? At least in 1998 they had a policy to campaign on, the G.S.T. It nearly cost them the election though, so they didn’t take WorkChoice into the 2004 campaign.
What you say is true Glen but where I part company with you is that you believe the fear of the unknown will prevail over the fear of the known. In many cases this could very well be so but in this IR case the “known” is far more scarier than the unknown. Would you rather be certain your job and conditions are guaranteed or would you rather take a chance with a bloke who put that on the line from the outset and changed his mind because he could see himself losing power? What will this bloke do if he retains power? Better to make sure he doesn’t rather than take the risk he might see his return as a go ahead to remove the test and do as Minchin forecast and go even further.
Well, the petrol indexation and Tampa in 2001 and parliamentary super and interest rate statements in 2004 were quite openly political. But I think that this year has seen it laid on so thickly, without very much “good for the country” window dressing.
Our dollar has slumped 10% in a few days and being that nearly everything in the shops is imported, will give inflation a hefty boost. This will lead ito higher interest rates.Not a pretty picture for anyone except those with loads of cash.
When I read comments by the the young lib diehards I cannot help but think of The Good Soldier Schweik.
Anymore polls like these and Rudd may as well throw in the towel.
It’s a laugh a minute here.
We can all analyse and pontificate til the cows come home but the thing is that team rodent is now going backwards – yep backwards.
Why? because Australian voters are divided into three groups.
1. Those who have no clue about very much at all – still a big percentage.
2. Those who are rusted on to one or other of the parties.
3. Those who listen, understand, think and take a position.
And the good news is that group 3 is growing at the expense of group 1. These folks can see right through the gaming around hospitals, plebescites, nuclear energy, etc and are walking away from team rodent in droves.
If he keeps it up then the coalition will be up sh*t creek without a paddle. But then he will be leaving anyway so he doesn’t give a rats about what happens to the rest of them.
The interesting thing will be to understand what the rest of team rodent think about this.
Living in a marginal might have its upsides (pork barrelling, the opportunity for your one little vote to actually influence the election’s outcome), but being in a safe seat has one big advantage:
Here in Curtin, we were subjected to only ONE pre-election mailout from Bishop the Mesmerizer in 2004. No postal carpet bombing, no pre-recorded phone calls from the father of the nation, no door knocking, no bus shelters plastered with ads warning about union bosses yada yada yada. I’m looking forward to this again in 2007 – if I switch off the
TV I can almost fool myself that there won’t be an election on. Pity the poor souls of Stirling, next door to me; Keenan even has billboards near City West Station on one of the main roads leading into the electorate (pity nobody’s splashed paint on it lately) – imagine what it must be like inside, and they would have had to put up with it all this year!
Now, if only I can find a polling booth with a decent sausage sizzle …
Grayndler may well be a marginal government seat at the next election.
If we had multi-member electorates with proportional represtentation then more people would have a higher influence over who is in government because most electorates would have a seat that changed between Labor and the Coalition and the number of parties represented in the lower house would increase.
(I am a different person to the one who wrote the comment at the top of these comments.
I have been commenting here longer.)
“Cisco Says:
August 17th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Can someone tell me the maximun number of employees a small business can have to be exempt from the re-introduction of unfair dismissal by Rudd .”
No offense meant Cisco but if you’re hiring and firing based on what someone on Canberra tells you then you probably shouldn’t be in business anyway. I’ve been an employer and it’s alway been possible to get rid of staff no matter what the law says as long as you do it properly and not just on a whim. In any case there is a good chance that the Conservatives will still control the Senate so Rudd may not be able to pass his legislation anyway.
Paul K, Rudd will pass something. He’ll be obliged to having campaigned on it so hard. It’s probably a good thing it’ll be modified in the Senate.
Senate amendments are good… I think I can remember when they happened regularly.
Glen, I live in Higgins, but am hoping that this time it will actually be close. (Knock, knock, knock, here comes Peter Costello. Peter wants your vote.) A swing to Labor is what you would expect after a rate rise and the “old and tricky” headlines in the Hun. Labor will emphasize that if there’s a downturn, Workchoices will be really bad for the workers. My prediction that Labor will win big still stands as the most likely outcome. 100 seats for Labor!!!
Glen says “I just think Howard should have managed it alot better with a fairness test to begin with…he was just silly not to do it and instead gave alot of ammo to the Unions…”
The trouble with Howard’s Workchoices was that it was entirely ideological – there was no attempt to include fairness or be objective from the start. That is the nature of the ideological beast.
They knew what they were doing and thought any flack would blow over quickly. Iemma was only returned because of it and this has had them running scared ever since. This was why they’ve tried to make it look fairer. And remember Howard saying that it didn’t need any changes!!!
But most folk aren’t believing them. And with good reason.
Glen, your post as an apologist for this Govt and your poor arguments about wages/growth/sackings (without any demonstration to support cause and effect) is about the saddest thing I’ve read all day.
I’m reasonably familiar with employment law, and I agree with Paul K’s assessment.
Another massive non-issue in the IR spin-cycle.
Glen, whilst the legal devil is often in the detail, we actually know quite a lot about the Rudd/Gillard policy. (I’ll avoid the obvious and compare the government’s failure to take anything approximating WorkChoices to the last poll) I certainly will have no problem, if Labor wins, taking my law class through the ALP’s IR promises, which map out the principles and planks. The key point is the ALP is not planning a brave new world, but a mix of present and recent IR systems. On this, Piping Shrike is right: both sides have hyped up the divide over IR.
Labor is on a winner electorally simply because WorkChoices went too far. And for what reason, we’ll never know. The government seems to have been motivated by a desire to drive a stake in the heart of a v.weak union movement, and particularly to repress the few strongly unionised sectors that are left in the private economy (even though none of them – mining, construction, wharves, even unis – were in any sense in economic hardship). Howard/Costello seem to have been caught in thinking leftover from the late 70s and 80s: Howard already had in place the death of the award system by several cuts, and unions were on a slow and steady decline.
If removing AWAs is ‘ideological’ so must have been their introduction (not to mention the spin-doctored name). I prefer to say both positions are based on certain principled assumptions.
There is no reason why a non-unionised employer cannot achieve flexibility through a non union EBA, so in that sense, AWAs were never needed in 1996, except to undermine the award system and further decollectivisation. I respect the PM for taking AWAs to their logical conclusion in 2005 and removing any no-disadvantage/fairness test.
Sorry if this is off-topic: to a nerd like me, the regulation of work is almost as interesting as the regulation of elections!
#88 pondie84
Senate amendments? Has anyone here seen the stats the Democrats have put together? truly fascinating:
http://www.democrats.org.au/campaigns/senate_watch/
go to second heading ‘Amending legislation’.
I’ve lived in Moreton (Brisbane) for a decade. Probably at its most marginal now.
Prior to that grew up in blue-ribbon conservative seats (Ryan, Groom, old Fisher (sunshine coast)).
Dear me, 90 posts in three hours, all to say the same stuff over and over again. Glen, if you really like jerking off so much I’ll send you some ace porn if you’ll stop flooding this page with your nonsense. Welcome to Melbourne Ports by the way – we really really love John Howard around here as you’ve probably noticed.
We all know that Howard will scrap any promises about fairness on WorkChoices Mark 3, saying he has a ‘mandate’ if he wins.
Put simply… the ‘fairness’ clauses, like the never-ever GST, is a non-core promise.
If Howard wins this election from this position, he will be the new Menzies and he will have a mandate to do precisely as he pleases for the next three years, on IR and everything else, and I’ve no doubt he will. Happily will not be here to see it, since if he wins I will emigrate.
That should read, Happily “I”
57
Gary Bruce Says:
August 17th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Steve, you can’t fool me, you’re doing a spoof on Shanahan’s method of interpreting polls. Or are you Shanahan by another name?
Talking about Shanahan, Gary, I was flabbergasted to say the least to read this from Mr Shanahan in The Australian today-
“Rudd is an effective and competitive Opposition leader who is the best thing to happen to Labor for years. He is up to the task of facing the media doing its’ job”.
Maybe he had a few too many shandy’s before he dropped that paragraph onto the end of an article entitled ‘The media should be sceptical of Rudd, too’.
PORK BARRELS AND WEDGIES : EPISODE TWO.
Current list-
1. Solomon (NT) $45 Million dollars tipped into bringing ‘law and order’ into the Northern Territory.
2. Braddon (TAS) Pork Barrel
A package to save the Mersey Hospital, which Rudd is currently in negotiations with an ill Tasmanian State Premier to ‘gassump’.
3. Bass (TAS) Pork Barrel
Federal Industry Minister Ian McFarlane announced on Wednesday a $6 million dollar industry assistance package for the timber industry in Scotsdale, specifically denying he has a pork barrel approach.
4. Eden Monaro (NSW)
Pork Barrel
The Coalition has offered to intervene in the Integrated Forest Products mill in a deal which would see the business re-open. The mill was closed after the State Labor Government revoked it’s long term supply of logs because of contract breaches. $4M Federal Government offer to tide the mill over financially was made conditional upon the State restoring the saw mill’s access to logs, even it is only a short term wood supply contract.
Local MP Nairn also has recently announced the Federal Government would be tipping in $29 million for local council water works and drought proofing projects.
Wedgie
This put the State Government in the invidious position of being accused of costing 130 jobs in the seat of Eden Monaro if it refuses to cooperate, creating a wedge between the State Government and the Federal electorate in Eden Monaro.
QLD
Wedgie
JWH has used the amalgamation issue to try to engage QLD voters into voting against a State Government policy by NOT voting Labor. The obvious targets are not so much Bonner and Bowman which are not provincial-rural seats directly affected by the council amalgamation policy. He is targeting more specifically QLD seats won in 2001 [Dickson (9.1) and Ryan (10.4) and in 1996 [Moreton (2.8), Herbert (6.1), Petrie (7.9), Leichardt (10.3) and Forde (13.0). He is also targeting the new notionally National seat of Flynn (7.9).
If anyone is aware of others I have missed please let me know.
Cheers
STROP
That is the trouble with Howard and the nasty Liberals. They would take their re-election, and the control of the Senate they have for some more months, as a “mandate” to introduce any draconian legislation they have been hiding in the cupboard.