Morgan: Liberal swing in Perth marginals

Steaming hot off the press: a Roy Morgan phone poll of 435 voters conducted last night (that’s a couple of hours ago at the time of writing), covering the Perth marginals Brand, Cowan, Hasluck, Stirling and Swan. The result of 50.5-49.5 in favour of the Liberals points to a tiny swing in their favour of 0.8 per cent. To allow direct comparison with Morgan’s national poll of marginals on the weekend, a result for Stirling and Hasluck has been hived off from the other three. It shows that the respondents surveyed in these seats generated the overall swing to the Liberals, with the others moving slightly to Labor. For what it’s worth, the Stirling and Hasluck result was replicated in the similarly small sample survey on the weekend.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

584 comments on “Morgan: Liberal swing in Perth marginals”

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  1. Matthew Green Rock already have a MOU with BHP to supply geothermal energy and are situated right near a high power lines. They will be using waste water from BHP and recycling it. South Australia may well end up as the source of 50% of Australia’s electricity in the not too distant future.
    The early bird gets the worm!

  2. LTEP (318)

    Don’t know if anyone else got around to answering your question, but Menzies scraped in by 1 seat in 1961. Also Gough Whitlam had a majority of something like 4 seats (may have been 1 or 2 more) after the double dissolution in 1974.

  5. 487 Sorry to mislead you Richard Jones just remember it wasn’t the budget papers, it was the Tasmanian Premier being quizzed at budget estimates committee.

  6. Regarding hot-rock geothermal. I’m an engineer, although I don’t work in the energy industry (although I used to work in mining infrastructure before changing fields), but it’s my understanding that as a source of power, ten years would be a conservative estimate for a pilot plant, but probably about right for a commercialised project (this could come down with suitable investment). Both Geodynamics and another company, Petratherm, have set up projects that have successfully demostrated proof of concept.

    There’s a good article at mine-web here: http://www.mineweb.net/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page38?oid=20361&sn=Detail

    The technology is limited somewhat by water use and remote locations. These problems are not insurmountable, but would require a large does of political will to get going. I would envision this kind of technology getting off the ground commerically before carbon-capture and storage (so called “clean coal”) would.

    That said, technological advances are more difficult to pick than elections…

  9. The Liberal party is in for a renaissance allright – when the exodus begins (especially in NSW) we will see a Parliamentary flood of nasty little creatures in the mold of the incoming member for Mitchell, Alex Hawke.
    These nutjobs are gonna take the Libs even further to the right while Labor nails down the political middle ground – any further concentration of Lib power amongst the extremists in its NSW branch will almost ensure that they are out of office federally for many years.
    Don’t believe me? Check out the 4 Corners that aired on 17 July last year. It tells a very interesting behind-the-scenes story of how far to the right, the NSW division of the Liberal party is headed.

    http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2006/s1686673.htm

  10. 481
    Richard Jones

    Thanks for that. Makes perefect sense, so basically a DD is extremely unlikely. As half the Senate is up for nomination at each election held, it makes sense if the governing party were still blocked they would call an early election. As a matter of interest, are their any new proposed (controversial) laws to be heard before the Senate prior to 1st July when the Govt is then expected to have the majority in both houses. I heard Kerry O’Brien talking of a law to enact Nuclear Power in Australia (in the senate?). I guess the big end of town would be following this with keen interest.

    Thanks again for your post.

  11. South Australia has been doing very well on renewable energy targets, particularly with wind energy. In fact 20% of our energy needs will come from renewable sources by 2009. All credit to Kevin Rudd’s media magnate, Mike Rann.

  12. Optimist – that is a shame. I despise the NSW Labor and Liberal parties in almost equal measure. It would be nice if someone held someone to account in that circus on Mac St.

  13. #447 Doug, Portlandbet has Brand and Swan looking very safe for the ALP as you say. Hasluck(at $1.38) is a very likely gain, Stirling basically at 50/50 . The next most marginal seat is surprisingly Canning(ALP $2.60). ie. most likely scenario is ALP gain of 1 or 2.

  14. @435

    Funny how Howard (after having stolen Keatings policies and economic legacy) is now stealing Keatings 1996 rhetoric. And Keating was right, Australia did change, it became a slimey America Lite rat race.

    What goes round…..

  15. Edward StJohn Says:
    November 21st, 2007 at 3:00 pm

    You people would miss me if I left the blog – you just cant bear to admit it.

    If you kept to generalisations and humour and dispensed with the more ignorant economic suppositions you often put forward I’d agree with you.

  16. Re 462,

    NB Says:

    November 21st, 2007 at 2:46 pm
    Does anyone know re electors who cast ballots overseas, what seats they are allocated to?

    NB, when we lived overseas (96-04), I was not yet a citizen but my Australian husband of course was. He voted in the electorate in which he was last registered before he left Australia to live in the states. I don’t imagine that policy would have changed much, if at all.

  18. Thanks Steve. It makes sense that it wasn’t actually in the budget although the State government may want to provide so start up assistance.
    Thanks also Kina. Those guys are determined to make it work.
    ChrisC, that’s why I chose GRK for the major part of my investment. I talked to the CEO and he’s adamant that it will be a shorter time frame than that.
    They have the advantage over the others as they have a good source of recycled water near by and a power line.
    It costs a million dollars a kilometre for powerlines I read somewhere to carry the load they would want to supply.
    In my view it’s definitely a goer. It needs investment and support from the incoming government will definitely help investor confidence.

  21. razzmatazz: Not every general election has a half Senate election, it depends on the timing of the HoR election.

    The election for the Senate can occur at the same time as a HoR if the half of the senate is set to expire within 12 months from the dissolution of the HoR. Senators take their seat on July 1 following their election. If Howard called the election in June, even for an election in July, we would have had to have 2 separate elections, the HoR and the half Senate election. Once July 1 came around this year, the election of the HoR and half Senate could occur on the same day. This is why the new senators will have to wait 7 months before taking their seats.

  22. razzmatazz, I would think that Kevin Rudd would not need a messy showdown in the first six months. He may however want to show just how out of date the Coalition is by introducing legislation he knows they will want to reject!
    He will have a lot of house cleaning to do in the first six months.
    There will be a shake-up in the bureaucracy to remove Howard-supporting time servers and to put in his own people.
    I wouldn’t imagine he would get down to real business until the second half of the year after the clean-up.
    The budget will be interesting though.

  23. Richard Jones and others-Vic Petroleum and Lakes Oil and others are forming a new company called Green Earth Energy Ltd that will explore for Hot Rocks/Geothermal energy in Victoria. The Latrobe Valley region features quite prominently but @ 30c a share for a start up seems a bit steep to me?

  24. I am starting to get the feeling that the conservative media is like the lid on a fast-boiling saucepan: it’s doing it’s best to hold in the patent public mood to boot out the government but it is increasingly being blown off but the steam of public opinion.

  29. Thanks Darn, but my question was in relation to first term majorities. Rudd might break the post-WWII record this Saturday.

  30. Tory Crimes, 30c a share would not be expensive necessarily. They may look incredibly cheap in two or three years. Depends what they are doing, where they are doing it, what expertise they have on board, whether they have undertaken any preliminary work and so on. What basis do they have for believing that they will find geothermal energy in the Latrobe Valley. Those are the kind of questions I would ask.

  31. Optimist @ 509 – Yes, this is the future if the polls prove correct – the question is, how many others like A Hawke are secure in safe seats? It will also be on in the national organisation. The spectacle of NSW-style branch stacking and pick-axing the LNP to the extreme religious right will be something to keep blogs like this going after the big day on Sat. Perhaps Crichton-Browne could even make a comeback in WA. In the meantime, the Rudd govt will be able to station its army permanently in the central electoral parade ground.

  32. Richard Jones, yes it seems only logical and responsible that the first 6 months will be focused on housekeeping (it has been 11 years since the last spring clean). This alone could be an interesting time and no doubt there will be many surprises to be found (in the attic, under the bed) … could be a busy time this Christmas for the paper shredders. Let us hope that accountability is brought back in from day 1 and the suppression of FOI laws is overturned. Nothing like a clean broom in any organisation.

  33. There’s also the unlikely scenario that Rudd could call a double dissolution before 1 July 2008 in which case some senators-elect from the 24 November 2007 election may never actually take their seats. It’d be an extreme crunch though.

  34. I think that Hughes will go to the Labor party. It is currently at 8.5% to the Liberal party. The sitting member came in with Howard in 1996. Picked up the local papers this afternoon and they each had a wide spread on the 3 local electorates – Werriwa, Fowler and Hughes (papers based out of Liverpool, NSW). The sitting member has pledged 1 million to build new sporting facilities this week – can you spell P*O*R*K ? 🙂 …… you know that they are in trouble when they pledge something to the electorate. Labor candidates response – “Government is to be congratulated for finally giving something to the residents of Hughes after ignoring them for 11 years” and questioned whether or notthe promise would come to fruition if the coalition was returned. Vale (sitting member) has also refused to sign a Teachers Federation pledge for increased funding for schools and instead called upon the State Government to “lift its game” regarding education. (The “blame the states” game) And Jim from Wattle Grove has a letter to the editor scathing of Ms. Vale. 6 paragraphs long, it ends with a suggestion that she “look at retirement with your big pension so that we may have a dynamic hard working MP who is supportive of the people living in the electorate and will honestly act in the best interest of our community”

  35. #
    332
    Edward StJohn Says:
    November 21st, 2007 at 1:20 pm

    TC – I c u are SL

    What I am ESJ is someone smart enough to know that this raconteur, tell it like it is, lovable rogue persona masks a very sick and twisted individual who has caused a lot of hurt to people who really didnt deserve it.

  38. Howard’s 5 point plan for his first 12 months:

    1) Keep economy strong.
    2) Keep Australia secure.
    3) Implement election promises.
    4) Resume efforts to implement the $10b Murray-Darling water plan.
    5) Start talks about having the Aboriginies recognised in the constitution.

    Compare Rudd’s 5 point plan:

    1) Ratify Kyoto.
    2) Start reforms on the public health systems.
    3) Begin rollout of high speed broadband.
    4) Hit the ground running on his $2.5b plan to upgrade trades training centres in high schools.
    5) Begin negotiations to withdraw troops from Iraq.

    Rudd outlines 5 specific policies he is going to tackle straight up, Howard’s plan is so broad that we still don’t know about the future under him.

  40. Richard Jones-Yes I ve got a prospectus and you could be right but some of the others you mentioned appear to be more advanced thats why i thought 30c was just a bit too expensive having said that i think its a good thing to get into if you can wait.

  41. razzmatazz, I hope so too. We all have to hold the government accountable and make sure they do what they said they would do. The FOI laws suppression needs to be lifted immediately and no doubt the Rudd team will have some pleasure in releasing those suppressed documents if they can piece them together after they have been through the shredders!
    It’ll be a bit like after the end of the East German regime when they left a huge pile of shredded documents but they have now found a new rapid way to piece them together.
    One can only magine the mess after eleven and a half years. It’s a bit like having really bad alcoholic tenants in your house and having to clean up after them when you have finally been able to get them to leave. It’ll need a heavy dose of tea tree oil to cleanse it!

  42. If Rudd wins I can see an interesting tactic coming for the following years with FOI. Whenever things get a bit tricky for the ALP you may find another piece of damning information on the Howard government coming out as a diversion.

  45. Andrew: “I’ve got my money on a Liberals victory.”

    No mate, as explained earlier, you’ve got $200 up a bookie’s nose on Sat’dee nite.

  46. Presumably points 1-3 of Howard’s plan are so obvious they don’t deserve to be mentioned?

    As if any politician would ever have:

    1) Deliberately trash the economy.
    2) Fatally weaken defences and invite invasion.
    3) Break all promises.

    Well (3) maybe, but they would never articulate it.

  47. “A Labor win in the marginal seat of Wentworth should be respected and not subjected to a legal challenge over Labor candidate George Newhouse’s eligibility, according to the Liberal MP who was controversially succeeded in Wentworth by Malcolm Turnbull.

    Peter King, who lost a bitter preselection battle to Mr Turnbull in 2004, said there was a strong mood for renewal across Australia, and that Mr Turnbull should respect the voters’ choice this weekend.”

    http://www.theage.com.au/news/federal-election-2007-news/dont-challenge-newhouse-says-lib-exmp/2007/11/21/1195321833096.html

  50. Excellent input from King! highlights the sore loser & grubby cheat syndrome from the Libs on the very day they try the latest slur (anti-Zionist staff, who actually only criticized theocracies in general – dont we all?)

    Newhouse to win.

    Rainman is overrated anyway. I could sort if see the “talent” angle until he started investing in voodoo nonsense!

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