• Michael Bachelard of The Age reports the blue-ribbon Melbourne seats of Kooyong (9.8 per cent) and Goldstein (10.0 per cent) are in danger of falling “because John Howard has refused to move aside”. This is according to a “senior Liberal figure” who desribes the Prime Minister’s new position on the leadership as a “catastrophe” driven by “selfishness”, and believes “next Tuesday’s Newspoll should be a catalyst for a change”. Elsewhere in Victoria, Deakin (5.0 per cent), McMillan (5.0 per cent), Corangamite (5.3 per cent), La Trobe (5.8 per cent) and McEwen (6.4 per cent) are rated “almost certain to go”, while Dunkley (9.4 per cent) and
Flinders (11.1 per cent) are “also under pressure”.
• Simon Benson of the Daily Telegraph reports that Labor polling in 10 New South Wales marginals pointed to swings of between 8 and 12 per cent, which was deemed so implausible it was redone – “only to return the same results”. The report also confirms no effort will be made to win seats from Labor, and says the Liberals have “started polling the blue-ribbon seat of North Sydney because of fears Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey could fall” (although similar noises could be heard during the 2004 campaign).
• Steve Lewis of The Australian reckons the Prime Minister’s announcement that he will hand over the reins to Peter Costello in an increasingly hypothetical next term of government amounts to him “sacrificing his own seat to save the Coalition”, since it will enable Maxine McKew to point to the certainty of a mid-term by-election. Significantly, the Prime Minister is now promising to serve a full term as member for Bennelong if the government is returned.
• Michael McKenna of The Australian reports that Moreton MP Gary Hardgrave “appears to have misled federal parliament” over the AFP’s inquiries into the “phantom staffer” and “printgate” affairs. An AFP spokesman is quoted saying a formal interview was requested with Hardgrave, which appears at odds with his statement in parliament on August 7: “I have not even been required for an interview by the AFP in the five-and-a-half months since this matter began”.
• Focus group sessions conducted by the Sydney Morning Herald, as reported by Peter Hartcher and Annabel Crabb, provide many pages of grim reading for the government and its supporters.
• Malcolm Mackerras tells the Canberra Times that the Greens’ Senate candidate in the ACT, former MLA Kerrie Tucker, is a “50-50” chance to lead the party to an unprecedented Senate win at the expense of Liberal incumbent Gary Humphries.
• Venturing slightly off topic, Sean Parnell of The Australian reports from Queensland that “senior conservatives fear Anna Bligh will use a state electoral redistribution late next year as the trigger for an early election, consigning an ill-prepared Coalition to another three years in Opposition”.
99
Possum Comitatus Says:
September 16th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
If Costello became leader, it would kill him Qld.
Too much of the Keatings about him, but minus the cult following.
….
possum, what do you think? is there an upside limit to a swing against the Liberals? Is it 6,7,8%…Or is it possible that the ceiling has been lifted?
Fran Kelly on INSIDERS today said the Liberals private polling shows Howard losing Bennelong rather easily. Why oh why didn’t they shift him into Mitchell?
An interesting analogy HH. After 1997 the Tories did not hold a single seat in Wales or Scotland, nor a single urban seat anywhere in England except about 12 seats in the wealthiest parts of London, and they even lost some of them to the Lib Dems (eg Kingston-on-Thames). The biggest town in England to have a Tory MP was Bournemouth. Even more amazing than Enfield Southgate was the loss of the two Brighton seats, which were as recently as the 1950s the safest Tory seats in the country.
Admittedly the Tory wipeout was partly a product of having three parties and non-preferential voting, so they lost a lot of seats where the vote was roughly Labor 40, Tory 35, Lib Dem 25. But it’s quite possible to see an analogous result here with older urban areas across the country swinging to Labor. That’s why the Libs are sweating on seats like Wentworth, North Sydney, Kooyong, Goldstein, Ryan, Boothby and Sturt.
Albert Ross@58
Coonan is a bigger fool than Alston, and that is saying something. The horrific decisions the Howard government have made in communications have largely escaped notice, but it is good to see they are getting some grief on Broadband.
Stewart Fist in the old days used to be a good read in Tuesday’s Oz – one of his points was that the government should have kept Telstra and sold off the copper. We could have then had true competion.
Coonan was excruciating a week or so ago on Perth radio regarding the hack of their net filter – she was saying things that were obviously wrong and uninformed. She really had no clue whatsoever.
Punters across Australia have reacted to the news that a “vote for Howard is a vote for Costello†by pouring further money behind a Kevin Rudd and a Labor victory.
Bookmaker Sportingbet Australia has adjusted the price of “Kevin 07†becoming Prime Minister to $1.30. In contrast, the odds for the Howard and Costello team have drifted out to $3.60.
Sportingbet Australia CEO Michael Sullivan made the point that the Coalition odds haven’t been so long for the past 11 years.
“In years of betting on the Federal Election, we haven’t seen a political party written off by punters the way Howard and the Coalition have been in the past two months,” he said, “it’s unprecedented.”
Gaynor,
On paper you should be right.
2002 State Election Hawthorn swang 9% the problem for the ALP in Kooyong is not Hawthorn for there are two or three booths that they can win on the TPP, the same goes for Kew the problem is Balwyn where the Liberals TPP comes in at round 70%.
Goldstein again at 2002 State poll Brighton swung by about the same as Hawthorn did as did Sandringham, the thing with Goldstein isn’t what happens in Brighton, its what happens in Bentleigh, Mc Kinnon, Ormond and the eastern end of Sandringham
What I suspect may happen is the Coalition will hold Kooyong and Goldstein but with margins below 5%.
For the polls to be right there needs to be some vary wild swings keeing in mind the ALP don’t think they will win Dunkley.
Adam, I’m with you. I think the rigid voting patterns of past decades are perforated, though have not broken down completely. Politics is a multi-factorial process – not just a matter of reflex voting.
The Liberals should be worried about “their” heartland. Howard has departed from a lot of the certitudes of the past in ways that undermine party allegiance and at least create the possibility for real contests in supposedly safe Liberal seats.
By their own actions, the Liberals have undermined their own credentials. The appeal of Liberalism to their core supporters is essentially comforting and pragmatic – their “self-image” is of a party that dependably represents and defends the status-quo: well-organized, predictable, stable, cohesive, reliable, capable and determined.
If they cannot make an appeal based on these values, the Liberals essentially have no political message. Their supporters become vulnerable to cross-over appeals – on things like the climate (transcends class & income), health policy (especially, we are all getting older and worry about the system is more and more a personal issue), education (the system is broken), foreign policy (the subordination of the National Interest to American political imperatives), even on IR, tax and the economy (the have-nots are often the children and grandchildren of the haves).
And on leadership itself, the Liberals have comprehensively messed things up. It’s hard to see how the cautious and pragmatic voters of the affluent middle-class will feel like rewarding the Liberals /Howard for their weakness and selfishness.
If the Labor Party keeps ringing people up with recorded messages the gap will close. Who ever thought that this was a good idea should be sacked.
Recorded messages turn people off, and with mistakes like this from Labors’ campaign it still possible it could be close.
Joe Hokeidonian assures us there are no plans for further IR reform:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/no-more-workplace-changes-hockey/2007/09/16/1189881325934.html
Well that’s so reassuring.
When Howard and Costello and Minchin climb over the bloody corpses of Ray Evans and Des Moore and swear on a stack of bibles, this might get some traction.
Blindoptimist:
“is there an upside limit to a swing against the Liberals? Is it 6,7,8%…Or is it possible that the ceiling has been lifted?”
Well the last newspoll quarterly had the average swing in the government safe seats as 13.6%, meaning there was some of those seats swing much more that the average amount to balance out the seats that would have had smaller swings.
So saying, there may have been a couple of points of polling overshoot in the safe seats, but it still would have been a 10+% average swing.
Thankfully, the next newspoll quarterly for July-September will be released very very soon and we’ll not only know the size of these swings, but we’ll also be able to figure out where they’re happening.Because we have the Crosby Textor research that highlighted new swinging demographics that havent been mentioned before, we have the new census data to match those demographics by seat, and we have a fairly good chunk of leaked polling around at the moment from which to demographically “anchor” the quarterly newspoll – it’s gonna be pseph heaven and will give a pretty accurate estimation of which seats are swinging and by how much.
It should also be a fairly accurate representation of what will happen on election day if this election behaves like the last 5 or so where the contest is won not in the election, but in the lead up to it.
And even if the polls still move a few points in the actual campaign, if we can figure out who is moving (which wont be hard with the millions of polls out in the campaign), we should be able to deflate our election estimates accordingly to retain accurate predictions.
Even if the Newspoll has even a tiny increase for the Coalition (which I highly doubt will happen), Howard’s personal approval rating is going to take a massive hit because of all this leadership schamozzle.
It seems Rudd’s Skills plan has industry support.
[Australian Industry Group chief executive Heather Ridout said she was waiting for further detail about the new body, but believed it could have merit.
“We’re cautious because we don’t know a lot about it but instinctively my view is that it could be very useful,” Ms Ridout said.
“I think it is important we do have a well-resourced body that’s got confidence in industry, got some broad expertise on it and I understand that’s another thing they’re going to suggest.” ]
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,22426631-5005361,00.html
Peter J. Nicol – “Coonan is a bigger fool than Alston, and that is saying something. The horrific decisions the Howard government have made in communications have largely escaped notice, but it is good to see they are getting some grief on Broadband.”
You know Coonan is desperate when she comes out claiming that Sol Trujillo is in bed with the Labor Party. Huh? Isn’t Sol little Johnny’s best friend? Perhaps it has something to do with the lawsuit Telstra is slapping on her
Ok that is the first and only time I will use the word “slapping” in the same sentence as Helen Coonan *shudder*
Heather Ridout support oh please… one of the most right wing commentators in this country.. a strange woman that one…
I have noticed Heather Ridout softening her pro Govt. stance over the past months. Maybe she is protecting the AIG’s interests.
Other industry lobby groups may be out in the cold for a while.
You watch as every lobby group in the land abandons the Titanic and starts trying to climb aboard the good ship Ruddigore.
[The Liberals should be worried about “their†heartland. Howard has departed from a lot of the certitudes of the past in ways that undermine party allegiance and at least create the possibility for real contests in supposedly safe Liberal seats.]
What exactly do the Liberals stand for, other than anti-unionism? I think Piping Shrike’s analysis is some of the best I have read. They got the GST through in 1998, but after that they haven’t really done much, because they didn’t know what to do. Howard went with WorkChoices this term because he had run out of ideas.
[Thankfully, the next newspoll quarterly for July-September will be released very very soon ]
If the NewsPoll on Tuesday is bad for the government, and the quarterly analysis follows late this week, or early next, then we can pretty well say The Australian wants Howard gone.
[You watch as every lobby group in the land abandons the Titanic and starts trying to climb aboard the good ship Ruddigore.]
This is what makes me sick. The business unions run scare campaigns against the ALP every year they are in opposition, but when they seem to have a chance of forming government they start sucking up. Look at the degree of compromise in Labor’s I.R. proposal, yet whatever they do is never good enough for the B.U.s This is the case even though Labor created the modern Australian economy, not the Liberals.
possum,
the electoral equations seem to be very dynamic. do the newspoll quarterly data aggregate responses over the quarter? giving statistically sizable samples for individual seats?…
13.6% in “safe” seats….even his excellency the foreign minister could be vulnerable..
“#
89
Trevor Said:
September 16th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
Have just completed a face to face with Morgan (in the Hindmarsh electorate). ”
Where did they poll you? At West Lakes Mall? (just curious)
Simon i totally agree with you and just watch how Labor starts softening its policies to suit these people, just to stay in government. The Labor Party in Victoria is an example of this before the election we will do this and this and then after the election oh no we can’t.. And these people never vote Labor.
possum,
your further remarks about elections being won/lost in the “pre-election” phase are interesting, too. campaigning is a prolonged process – by the time polling time arrives, people are just glad it will all be over for a while, which can’t be good news for howard right now – people want to vote and get on with their usual lives.
No point.
If the Libs lose Bennelong, then they’ll probably lose the election along with it. Howard would be of no use to the Libs in opposition, so there’s no value in him shifting to a safer seat. And in Mitchell of all places – where the party has just found a young candidate who’ll probably occupy the seat for decades to come. Displacing Alex Hawke with John Howard would be retrograde.
Melbcity@ 60 – I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; Mayo will be a seat to watch on election night. If talking to people is any indication, the Liberal vote is collapsing. The thing about Mayo is that it isn’t an apparent “winnable” seat, so it will fly under the radar, just like so many other safe Coalition seats.
Downer is seriously on the nose. The perception is that he’s lazy, has an overblown sense of self-importance and the suggestions that his office was responsible for the Scores smear has turned people right off.
Now, I don’t know whether those anti-Downer votes will go Labor, Green, Democrat or Other, but I suspect a largish proportion will go to Labor via preferences in any case. Or to the Greens, should they come second. The point is that Downer – 13% margin notwithstanding – might be in a bit of trouble.
Whether it is enough to knock him off is another thing, but it will be a close run thing. A mood for change is definitely there, that’s for sure.
Simon @ 117 “Howard went with WorkChoices this term because he had run out of ideas.”
Oh no, that’s a serious misreading of Howard. WorkChoices embodies Howard’s core agenda, the whole reason he has been in politics all these years. Hatred of the unions is the emotional foundation of Howard’s lower-middle class, small-businessman background. No doubt it has to do with his petrol-station-owning father’s early death etc, but I’ll leave the psychopolitics to Judith Brett who does it so well. Getting WorkChoices up was the culmination of his career. It’s now that he has run out of ideas. He should have retired last year, not just because it made electoral sense but because he had nothing left to do in politics. We can only assume he’s clinging on because he fears life without politics, or perhaps he fears that Costello might undo his great achievement and he’s waiting for a true believer (like Abbott only not so feral) to be ready to take over.
marky marky says,
Which election promises has the Victorian Labor Party actually broken?
No reports of the PM heading to Yarralumla today.
He has built-up the perception that the election will be called after parliament adjourns this week. This has him in a cleft stick – the polls are so bad that his only hope is to wait until the last minute in the hope that something will turn up. However by his own actions he has the electorate keyed up for an announcement next weekend – further delay will add to the perception that he is not in control.
Adam, are you saying the Titanic is Rudd – er – less.
I know, I know – shocking pun [hides face in shame]
Tom.
Barbara, no they door knock. The lady in question has to do about 8 over the weekend. Takes about an hour but is mainly other things and politics has the standard questions – Who will you vote for? Who will get your second preference? Who do you think will win the election – ALP or Liberal? Is Australia heading in the right or wrong direction? Said its heading in the right direction if we get rid of the current government – that got a laugh!
Toll road…. Chris… a rather substantial policy… Then there was little things like reform of parliament with an independent speaker..
And by the way i am talking about 1999 and not 2006.
Just to digress, this talk about Howard quitting and a Leadership spill… which media groups are leading this crap… oh it must be the Murdoch media… the people who run the country…
Simon @ 117
Work choices was JWH’s raison d’être, and at the very core of his ideology. It was and is his main device in the destruction of the Unions and their funding of Labor. I would say a big part of his loss of self confidence is that it is been so resoundingly rejected by voters. Hard to reconcile that implementing your lifelong reason for being results in the utter destruction of your career and all you ever stood for. Thats the problem when you get caught in your own glory.
124
chinda63 Says: “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; Mayo will be a seat to watch on election night. If talking to people is any indication, the Liberal vote is collapsing.”
omg, is it too good to be true? Howard, blind freddie can see that he will go. but in an ideal world, might we also get the other big guns gone too? wonderful, wonderful ….. could we have a post election world with howard, costello, downer and abbot all gone? that would be the ultimate luxury on election night :):):)
Sad as it is, there is no way in heck that the ALP will pick up Mayo in the election. This seat covers some of the most conservative areas in SA, and hell will freeze over before the ALP win this seat. I say this with one proviso, in that a strong independent candidate could do well, but I am not aware that any is running at this time. The slow but sure death of the Australian Democrats is assisting Downer’s cause no end. Even at the last election with Brian Deegan (his son was killed in the Bali bombings and is an Adelaide magistrate) running against Downer, he didn’t even come close to spoiling (15.2% of the primary vote). Sorry to spoil the Downer is going to lose Mayo bandwagon, but it ain’t going to happen.
Thanks, marky marky says. I did not know about the independent speaker, but the toll road was certainly a broken promise, which the Libs should have capitalised on but did not. That said, most parties do in fact carry out almost all the promises that they make, except when they do not control both Houses, and in those cases there are often compromises. Education is the field I most pay attention to, and I can think of only one specific Labor promise that has not been implemented, though there could be others I am unaware of. General statements are a different ball game, of course. I think Victorian Labor’s problem is not the breaking of promises but the failure to make enough of the right ones in the first place. The federal Liberals problem has been carrying out promises that they did not make; e.g., WorknotcalledChoicesanymore.
“129
Trevor Says:
September 16th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Barbara, no they door knock”
No one ever polls me! I am in Hindmarsh but we have been in and out this weekend.
Gippslander (91). So these wedges are also windmills? (You follow the logic of both Rove and Cervantes). I admire your faith if you believe Labor will rediscover its spirit and turn these wedgy windmills into ploughshares: having taken no opportunity to argue the principle, and hence allowed the issue to be framed in an inexorable way.
Hockey was happy enough to cast ethic slurs himself recently with his “scottish trade union” attack on doug cameron.
As with so many of rodents rats, its OK for THEM to dish it out.
I have NO time for someone who seeks the loss of working conditions for the poorest Australians as hockey does.
The label “avuncular” was just another lie from rodent when he replace the terminally incompetent kevin andrews with hockey.
Vote Mike Bailey in North Sydney !
I agree that Labor cannot beat Lord Downer. I’m told the Greens candidate Lynton Vonow is quite good, but I doubt the Greens can beat him either. The good burghers of the Hills and the Fleurieu are not going to vote for a lefty of any kind. A strong centrist independent is what is needed. Come on, you croweaters!
hmmm we are a happy bunch today, and right it is to be signing songs of joy and psalms of praise on the Lord’s day. Although 1 in 20 should be to God not Kevin, but Kevin seems to be in the ascendancy.
I have thought for a long time the ACCI and BCA should be frozen out by Labor Governments. They are riddled with libs as badly as trade unions are riddled with labor people. Why would they be given oxygen. I don’t mean nasty and stupid stuff like the libs do, but just consistently treated and labeled as the self-interested conservatives they are? Why is this so hard for the Labor Party? Why do we pretend they are like independent experts?
Rumor on Sky News: Howard will resign on Tuesday. The Liberals already know the next Newspoll will be horrendous for them(61:39 to Labor?).
I’ll believe it when it happens – Janette loves that mansion at Kirribilli.
And it’d be much more satisfying watching the rodent concede defeat, as I hurl abuse at the TV screen and get very drunk.
Trevor, i’m in Wakefield, i was polled by phone recently, i dont know who they were for, it was weird in the beginning, a robot voice said to stand by for an important call then a blast of music and a voice saying they were media something or other {i couldnt catch what} then i was asked who i voted for last time, who i was voting for this time, how strong was my vote, what was my main concern, what gender i was and how old i was.
a television crew flew over this weekend to film for a program that goes on Foxtel first and then ch9, i was part of it, i quizzed the crew over their political leanings and in the younger group 23-25 i was amazed, seeing the work they do, as to how little they seem to know about the current political scene, they were lib leaning by the way though i DID try to corrupt them, actually ive got a $10 bet with one on the election outcome, i will gleefully collect if things go right, it was a bit of light banter on a sombre filming.
Howard Hater, I hope they have a copy of the death march to play over the announcement.
It seems that you have to be a chemist to be preselected for the Greens in Mayo. Lynton Vonow is a qualified biochemist, and their candidate at the last election, Dennis Matthews was my chemistry lecturer at Flinders University back in the mid 1990’s. He was into cold fusion, and photovoltaic cells to name but a few of his research interests over the years!
We don’t want Howard to go do we? If he stays and is defeated which is highly likely surely we want to see his concession on election night (doubly so given that he is also likely to lose his own seat.) Go the Power.
Oakeshott,
Just a small point about Singapore. It is not so much that Singapore does not have an effective opposition, more that the Lee Dynasty does not permit an effective opposition.
It is hard for any opposition parties to campaign in Singapore, most forms of political dissent are prohibited.
But you are right, Singapore is the model that Howard would like to introduce here.
looks like the Neilson poll this week is 500 interviewed in Bennelong.
http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,22427210-5005940,00.html
Graeme.you’re right, I do have faith! But I’m also like the old Tory Peer (perhaps it was Lord Chatterly) I do like sex, but don’t like scaring the horses!
I doubt that your ideas of desirable changes in Australia are more extensive than mine. But in an election I would rather set the bar too low, and get something done, than set it too high, and get nothing done.
In the Age today somebody said that a party which is appealing to its support base is going to lose, one appealing to the swinging voter might win. Being in opposition you can achieve very little.
I was a fervent ALP supporter in Victoria in the 50s and 60s.. and the net result of all that fervour? Robert Ryan hanged, and conscripts in Vietnam! But we all felt self righteous.
It was the British actress Stella (Mrs Patrick) Campbell who said (of gay men): “”My dear, I don’t care what they do, so long as they don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.”
Adam: I’ve still got a videotape of the UK election night coverage from 1997, which I dust off every now and then and watch.
The similarities between Britain in 1997 and Australia ten years later are unnerving! An economy humming along, but a public increasingly tired of a party that’s been in power too long. And a fresh new Labor leader.
In the end, I doubt Labor will win anything like the predicted 50 seat majority, perhaps something more like a majority of 8 -15 seats.