Newspoll has been sprung on us a day early, showing Labor’s two-party lead widening to 56-44 from 55-45 a fortnight ago. Labor’s primary vote is up from 47 per cent to 48 per cent, and the Coalition’s is down from 41 per cent to 39 per cent. Kevin Rudd has taken a slight hit on his satisfaction rating, down from 65 per cent to 62 per cent.
Abbott should just knuckle down to his portfolio, stop being the Minister for Kevin Rudd, and quit his “sleepwalking” comments, and his whingeing.
Abbott:
Sydney Morning Herald, 6 June 2007
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/abbott-why-are-voters-so-unkind/2007/06/05/1180809521656.html
As an exponent of “if you don’t like your job, find another; there are plenty out there”, he should take his own advice!
Rx, I think he’s the secretary Minister for Rudd, under Downer.
My only concern is, what the children will look like.
William
for blockquotes, not [ and ]>
Just practising my protocols.. let’s see if it worked.
Sunray the Underrepresented
A further helpful translation, courtesy of China Manual Manufacturings Ltd:
CMM translation:
A dam Sunray has alumni ahead. Must never shooting glens with anger for many infestations of strife. Using Morpheus’ residence is well informed to be good for beneficiaries with practice. Learning to be a stairwell and Glen’s braincell work hard in porcelain basins doing revolutions.
At this point, the language translator apparently quit. I did my best. 🙂
Possum, with the greatest of respect, this all started when you published an analysis of recent Newspolls, which included a list of seats which, according to that analysis, would have been won, at the time those polls were taken, by Labor. You even showed the margins to one decimal place. The list included Warringah, Wannon, Dawson, Kooyong, North Sydney and Goldstein. I said I did not believe that Labor was going to win any of those seats, and further that I did not believe that a two-party majority of voters in any of those seats had ever told Newspoll that they were going to vote Labor. That observation was based on my knowledge of those seats and more than 30 years of watching and participating in elections, and I stand by it. I’m not a statistician and I’m not trying to argue statistics with you. I’m making the point that any opinion poll needs to be interpreted in the light of knowledge acquired by other means. Polling is not an exact science. An opinion poll only has value if it is interpreted in the light of experience. If someone came out with a poll tomorrow showing the Libs on 60%, we’d all say “Oh no that can’t be right,” no matter how impeccable its methodology, because it would make no sense in the light of what we know from other sources. I’m accused of taking things too literally. I’m not sure what that means. You published the list. I said it should not be taken literally but rather interpreted in the light of what we know about those seats. You actually agreed with me, when pressed, that you did not think Labor would win several of those seats. If you think that, what is the value of the list? If the list has no predictive value, what is the point of it?
Pat, on further consideration, they are not just Ministers for Kevin Rudd. The entire current Cabinet is the Cabinet for Kevin Rudd.
If they could talk about their plans for the future, instead of besmirching the Opposition and its leader at every pass, they might be in for less of a hiding.
But I guess it is hard to talk about the country’s future when their only “vision” is getting themselves re-elected so they can tighten the WorkChoices screws into working Australians.
Re Adam – Possum.
The election is not far away, this will answer the debating points. My gut feeling is that this will be a very different election, throw past logic out the window, things will happen in very odd places.
307judy I think the riot option would be on the cards. Would there be any Liberals left?
I enjoyed a lovely lunch today provided by “Choiced” Labour working for 15 dollars an hour at a lovely African/French fusion cafe in Balmain. What’s all the fuss? The workers seemed very happy and content with the master.
But seriously during my hiatus it became very apparent that Forward with Fairness is very much WorkChoices with a few bones thrown to the unions. In substance the unions die under the Libs in 18 months or after Rudd provided Chemo in about 5 years. Big deal. It was of course the deal Rudd had to do to stop a real business campaign against him. And the lukewarm neutral statements from BHP etc were the prize. I am told that Rudd’s hatred of the AWU/SDA in QLD also means he wont shed a tear at their demise.
I have decided against posting on ministry/shadow ministry compositions, because after all many of you will just continue your madrassa like chanting but suffice to say what Labor bragged about in the 80’s and 90’s ie we are professional and the Libs are amateurs is something that it goes to great lengths to hide now. You also miss the point about unions no one dreads a return to the 70s (except perhaps from the CFMEU) but there is an extraordinary amount of people in the ALP whose career path has been university/staffer and or union official/ parliament – its legitimate to say these people will suffer from a higher than usual degree of group think.
I of course do not rule out Howard pulling of the lid off the coffin in 8 weeks or so – but clearly the polls at the moment read a clear cut defeat. Going on Newspoll quarterly averages a 9% 2PP in QLD spells doom but I think a polling swing of 6% 2PP in QLD is still very possible in which case the Libs stay in the game assuming a similar clawback in other States. There is essentially a group of 14 seats of which Howard needs to hold 10 to win. Think Deakin in Victoria, Cowan in WA, Dobell, Wentworth in NSW, Blair in QLD etc.
Two challenges for you putative Labor hacks out there?! What advance have the “unions” delivered since 1987 (introduction of compulsory super) [ and dont say James Hardie asbestos – because that was something the NSW govt stiffarmed for them to cover its own disgraceful shortcomings in this area] and secondly please name a policy difference between the 2 parties and dont just say “WorkChoices” please be specific?
If Iran decided to retaliate the Australians would be caught in the middle. Take note if the Australians are shifted elsewhere that would be a clue as to what is about to happen. Also keep an eye on the Austrians.
Apoligies if this has already been posted by someone else. Andrew who hosts Deal or No Deal has a political blog on Yahoo. This is his link to an article about Howard.
http://election2007.yahoo.com.au/BlogEntry.23.aspx
ESJ, if you want to discuss unions at any depth or length, you will have to ask (what’s left of) your Liberal fellow-travellers. Most other people couldn’t give a stuff about your side’s assembling of a union bogeyman.
After WorkChoices, though, many people are worried about the insidious control of business unions on the Coalition.
Edward St John, I’m not too concerned about what the unions have or have not done.
We know the Howard Government introduced workplace reform that they knew would disadvantage Australian workers. I need to know no more.
Edward StJohn,
Your post really points out why the Libs are so out of touch. For you guys it’s all about Unions, Unions, Unions. No one I know who voted Howard last time but is considering Rudd this time are even thinking about Unions. As I’ve said before the Union issue is only an issue with die hard government supporters, but for swinging voters it’s a dead issue.
Adam, so what would you have Possum do objectively? Remove seats that he does not believe will possibly ever go to Labor?
What grounds can you objectively do this? Unless you can suggest something that is grounded in statistics, perhaps a weighting mechanism based on the percentage of times since creation that the seat has gone to the ALP, then I can’t imagine Possum erred too much in his analysis.
Once the analysis has been done we’re all free to look at it and make revisions based on our beliefs on how things will actually work out.
$15/hour equates to about $30k a year. How do you save for a house and the good things of life on that sort of stipend especially in Sydney.
But don’t worry, Possum has done an analysis on Liberal safe seats. Sad for you, but Warringah your erstwhile seat is on the hit list of posssible Labor gains.
So, while you are supping on the good things of life and indulging your gout inducing diet, the workers are pissing on your swag.
They are smiling because pretty soon tossers like you are about to be hoist on your hubric petard.
Keep smiling and laughing because you and your ilk are on the raod to political oblivion. And, we won’t miss you a bit.
Edward StJohn
Fibre to the node broadband, signing the Kyoto protocol. Want more?
What is the coalitions tax policy?
344 ruawake. WOW, its got everything on it that I have been banging on about over the last six months. Not just on here. Maybe someone has been listening?
What is the Coalition’s IR policy for their next term (should they be given one)?
Adam are you ok?
If anyone who missed the boos for Howard last night at the NRL GF can get a rebroadcast on TV OR a podcast from the ABC website, the 7pm national news tonight played that clip in their story about todays Newspoll results.
CETP, IMHO Possum should not have bothered with the list. It is trying to squeeze more specificity out of opinion polling data than there is to be squeezed. All we can say about those polls is that they showed a big swing to Labor, which was even bigger in the safe Liberal seats than in the marginals. Possum is trying to treat psephology as though it was physics. It isn’t. Polling is not an exact science. Why else do four polling companies ask the same people the same questions on the same day and get four different results? Forming useful opinions about electoral behaviour is not just a matter of statistics. It also involves psychology, sociology, economics, history and lots of politics. Calculating a putative Labor majority for Wannon on the basis of opinion polls is the kind of statistical fetishism that makes psephologists look silly.
All the brouhaha about “union hacks” fails to look at the individual people (as does the “lawyer” stuff in the other direction). A quick bit of googling reveals that Shorten has Arts and Law degrees and Combet tertiary qualifications in Engineering, Economics and Labour Relations.
It is as ridiculous to criticise them for having pursued their career through the union movement as it would be to criticise someone on the other side for having worked for a transnational corporation (or organisation of employers).
I’m sure there’s just as much nasty political manoeuvring in these organisations as in your average trade union, and I’m sure the management is no more accountable to the owners than trade union officials are to their members and quite likely less.
Surely attention should be given rather to the natural and acquired abilities of candidates (from both sides) and the contribution they can make to good public policy.
BrissyRod, I’m super, thanks for asking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El-qtrfCJwc&mode=related&search=
349 Julie. Thanks a lot Julie. I am always interested in learning about these sorts of things. I used Wikipedia to learn a lot about Southern Baptists. But I also found there own site quite helpful. There map that shows where the Southern Baptists are located is helpful. In fact should you superimpose that map with a map of the red states it explains a lot. Further if you take the average IQ of the states information I posted here earlier, its amazing how they coincide with the number of Southern Baptists. In spite of that information being dismissed.
I must admit I agree with Adam’s sentiment on this. Statistics and polls are interesting but at the end of the day there has to be some political analysis to interpret them. Having said that, I do think the Liberal is softer than is being talked about here. If Adam does think these seats will definitely not fall (although there have been reports that Liberals are worried about Kooyong and Goldstein) then it would be nice if he deigned to give us a reason.
366 – GG
I’ll let you in on a secret Australia has always had low paid industries pre and post WorkChoices. For example a check-out chick at Woolworths earns $640 per week – $60 above the award. Woolies is perfectly entitled legally not to raise wages until the award catches up. In fact today’s friendly workforce earned more than the award.
367 – RU
Broadband – what’s the difference -seems there are 2 different models on offer. Ford vs Toyota. Unless your a tech head who cares?
Kyoto – I agree. We’ll see after the election who thinks that one is a winner.
365&363 – If you choose to shut your mind to alternate views thats up to you of course. Dare to struggle dare to win comrade. I of course am in my fellow traveller Adam’s camp – aint no way seats like Warringah, Berorwa and Wannon will turn socialist at this election. Dream on.
I did enjoy the unexpected analysis from Andrew wotsisname from Deal or No Deal. It was remarkably well written, and I did like this line: “The brown rat (rattus norvegicus) is as supple as rubber and will dislocate his own hips to slip through a hole to the pantry”.
And a reader comment was interesting…the one that said “I’d forgotten about AWB”.
I do think AWB is worth a mention every so often by Labor…the fact that we paid bribes to the regime that we followed George Bush to war against. It is a truly remarkable thing, kept low-key in the public mind only because it was a complicated issue, and wheat sales aren’t sexy like New York strip clubs.
Yeah Edward,
But now I guess your worried that the glubby bits in the chicken soup weren’t chicken.
Best get back to Warringah. We’re storming now!
378 – So what?
The government pays for “inducements” all the time.
Have you ever looked at the list of countries we sell arms to? Or the itinerary for Asian military officers hosted by the Aust Govt when in Sydney/Melbourne, needless to say we pick up the tab!
ESJ (359) – you are correct to draw attention to the similarities of the IR policies of each side, but you greatly underplay the differences. To mind, their are three significant differences between Labor’s IR policy and WorkChoices, and each of these will be a direct benefit to employees.
Firstly, Labor intends to have a measure of industrial democracy with a compulsory collective bargaining clause, whereby, if a majority of employees want a collective agreement, then the employer has to negotiate in good faith (as is the set up in most of other Western nations). WorkChoices has no mechanism for this.
Secondly, Labor has pledged to re-introduce a form of the unfair dismissal law. Its effective abolition in WCs has greatly contributed to anxieties about job security.
Thirdly, Labor plans to greatly increase the “floor”, with 10 minimum conditions underpinning a revived Award system – WCs only has 4 such conditions.
The main areas where FWF in similar to WCs is in the area of restrictions on union activity, something I’m sure you would be in favour of.
I’ve said it before, but WorkChoices is the fundamental cause of the government’s malaise. Its introduction served as a breach between Howard and his so-called “battlers”, and events since then have all played away from the government. When the tide turns, it can run out fast.
“It also involves psychology, sociology, economics, history and lots of politics.” .. and that inevitably leads to voting intentions and swings which make up polls and statistical analysis further disects without emotion or worries about being right or wrong. People can then apply their personal knowledge as to probability of certain events happening.
“..the kind of statistical fetishism that makes psephologists look silly.”
A little bit of bile seeps through.
Excellent Adam! Great to hear.
By the way thanks to the person for responding to my question. I am convinced we go to the polls 24 Nov.
Fagin @ #264
“Cronulla-Sutherland are blue-blooded Lib types anyway… They can go to hades along with Howard)”
Hey watch what you say about us Sharks supporters.
I’ve been a Labor voter all my life and i grew up there.
In fact given that labor has been perennial losers at a Federal level we Sharks supporters have more in common with labor than the libs.
As Jack Gibson said it:
Waiting for Cronulla to win the premiership is like leaving the verandah light on for Harold Holt.
Still it’s not the winning, it’s the struggle. 🙂
337 @ Julie Says:
{The Mormons are the worst lot you can ever imagine, I have read some things about their practices and so on that would raise the hair on your head. }
Julie, I find what you have posted here extremely offensive and I don’t know where you get your information on the Latter Day Saints but it is very wrong.
All the Mormans that I know don’t fit in any shape or form your discription of them.
I am a non alligned Labor voter since 1972, am a Morman and know of many of a similar faith that have similar preferences.
All of them that I know are great family people and good citizens of this country. The church itself does not involve itself in partisan politics of any sort.
There may be some sort of aberations within breakaway sects in other countries, but I am also not aware of them either.
Please check your facts through reputable sources and don’t aleniate an important voting block with unsubstantiated rubbish. The Missionaries may be a bit of a bother to some people but they mean well and are always polite no matter what the situation.
I would rather be associated with them tham the godless, disgusting Liberals or characters like Ackerman et al.
“Further if you take the average IQ of the states information I posted here earlier, its amazing how they coincide with the number of Southern Baptists. In spite of that information being dismissed.”
Yes, it’s amazing how the data of a made up table matches perfectly with the intentions of the person who made it up…
Much as I dread entering the debate between Possum and Adam (both of whose posts I really enjoy), I must say that I can see both sides of the argument.
It is true that if you apply the swing uniformly you will have Labor winning seats like Wannon and Goldstein. However, unless a poll is done in a specific seat, it’s stretching a long bow to make conclusions about any individual seat based on a national poll. Still, it’s an interesting and fun exercise. And there are always seats that do fall unexpectedly to huge swings (Hughes in 1996 being a fine example).
But Adam, I reject this statement/question of yours: “Why else do four polling companies ask the same people the same questions on the same day and get four different results?”
Of course, they ask different people…unless there’s a deceit going on that you know about and I don’t. They even have to apply complex formulas to their results, to make it appear that this week’s lot of different people were the same representative sample that last week’s were.
In this respect, political polling is different to television ratings. They stick a gadget on the TVs of certain families, and record the viewing patterns of the same people each time. My feeling, then, is that TV ratings would give a more accurate picture of changing viewing patterns over time, than political polls. But I’m not a statistician – would any statisticians care to comment?
Hugo 381,
I agree with your list of 3 conditions, however
If a union has a majority of members in a workplace then under WorkChoices more than likely the employer will collectively bargain.
The 10 minimum conditions are all pretty ho-hum, ie allowing a long term casual to convert to permanent. Sounds nice but there window dressing. Bottom line Labor will like WC allow trading off penalties/OT
Unfair dismissal – 2 edged sword there. Some will like it – others wont like small business.
But we can agree there not earth shattering differences?
I agree with you however on the impressions on WorkChoices in voting terms. I like many others underestimated the effectiveness of the propaganda about WC.
Possum has every justification in dissecting and examining polling statistics in order to determine the possible outcome of an event. It’s no different to trying to predict exactly where and when a game of football may be won. You might be wrong but you can do it. Concede Adam. 😉
Michael Brissendon on the 7:30 report replayed the boo sequence in his story too :):):) (I think that the 7:30 report does have a podcast as well)
Communications Minister Coonan is the interview tonight talking about Telstra and their stoush.
Abbott calling Rudd a tourist now, starting to scratch the barrel of the inane.
Haneef on Four Corners tonight?
318
Adam Says:
“I didn’t say who or what I had an issue with. I asked Growler how much he wanted to wager on Labor winning any one of Warringah, Wannon or Kooyong. I’ll ask you the same question. How does $1000 sound for starters?”
I did the whole thing again my way and basically got what possum got. His point is not, this is what the result is going to be, his point is “this is what is hidden behind the polls”. The issue is the swing is coming from liberal voters, the more liberal voters in the electorate the bigger the swing.
Are you going to guarantee the polls stay where they are?
I won’t take Kooyong it is looked after by a moderate so I don’t think he will fall, I’d vote for him, but I have heard he is worried. Warringah, on these polls my calculated guess is to labor by 0.63%, too close but the Abbot, tempting. Wannon, I get 1.6% to labor very tempting. But I see your point, calculatiing a result and risking $1000 on it are two different things.
386,
Scorpio, if you like ask William to give you my personal email. I will give you the same book reference I provided to Chris B. Cheers :):)
William, I’m certainly aware of you wanting to keep postings to the point, and that Iran has been discussed on another thread. However, a number of people have again raised the spectre of the U.S. bombing Iran and it has again been discussed on PM this evening, and views were sought on what, if any, impact this may have on the election. Again, I would put forward the view that given the majority of the Australian people were against the Iraq debacle, given that Iraq has developed into the disaster anyone with a modicum of understanding of the history and politics of the region predicted, then a strike against Iran would have a significantly adverse effect on any Australian government that supported such a move. Not only that, but anyone with the merest grasp of what such a strike would unleash, had better be telling anyone who will listen to do anything they can to avert such a strike. Iran will strike out at their enemies, such as Israel, Israel will retaliate against their enemies and the entire region will descend into a blood bath of unimaginable proportions, possibly of nuclear proportions. Whatever, the impact on the Australian election and I do think it would be negative for the Libs. if they support it, every body had better do whatever they can to make sure it doesn’t or you can kiss your posterior good bye. That includes you, Glen and Edward St. John or you won’t have any workers to exploit and your dollars will be ash.
I think if people are unhappy with Adam’s views about Possum’s analysis, they might like to consider the differences between a number of seats in Victoria. Goldstein, Higgins and Kooyong are all traditional liberal seats, whereas seats like Aston and Casey are less traditional seats. As the margins in the non-traditionals have grown, the traditional seats’ margins have remained relatively static (1996 vs 2004).
An opinion poll cannot explain the difference in these seats. They are all “safe” coalition seats, but their behaviours are different. This is the point Adam was making.
TPS, Adam has already ‘deigned’ to give us his reasons behind his belief that the Liberals will hold a bunch of blue-ribbon Liberal seats (big startling call, Adam, very brave of you) – because he’s been, quote “watching and participating in elections” for more than 30 years and anyway, he just knows.
He only just stopped short of saying that he understands the seats of Warringah, Wannon, Dawson, Kooyong, North Sydney and Goldstein because he owns them.
If anybody out there has been “watching and participating” in elections for 40 years, will they please put Adam back in his box?
Meanwhile, no matter how many times Possum and others have explained that the original analysis merely illustrated an artefact of the Newspoll result and was not, nor was it represented to be, a prediction or claim about which seats would actually change hands, Adam continues to verbal Possum and insinuate that Possum had made reckless predictions or claims.
Yet Adam’s accusation is not supported by anything that Possum has written then or subsequently. Possum has explicitly disclaimed that he was making predictions, yet Adam continues tiresomely to press the point and wilfully to ignore the good-faith explanations that have been provided time and again.
I hereby nominate Adam for the 2007 Euclid Award for most obtuse angle.
Edward,
You got to be joking!
As Howard is finding to his chagrin, advertising/propaganda works best when the intended audience relates to the message being communicated.
The fact is, after millions of dollars of tax payer funded advertising, most people still think of Work Choices as a crock and that they specifically blame Howard and his entourage for its introduction.
Howard lost the trust of working Australians when he introduced Work Choices. They have not forgotten or forgiven and will take the appropriate revenge when Howard fronts for his day of reckoning.
If I were you, I’d get back to Warringah to help Tony repel the invaders.
Adam,
The children seem to be turning against the prophet. First Sanjay and now Mercurius.
In the words of Lenin, “What is to be done?”
LOL