The Australian has published the latest cumulative Newspoll with state-by-state breakdowns. Most interesting of the state-level results is a correction following a mid-campaign Labor plunge in New South Wales.
Marcus Priest of the Financial Review on the dispute over George Newhouse’s eligibility in Wentworth (UPDATE: A learned refutation of what follows from Grace Pettigrew in comments):
One option for Turnbull to avoid a new election would be to argue that rather than go back to the ballot box there should be according to an ancient common law rule a recount that excludes the disqualified candidate. The High Court has not been willing to do this in other successful challenges but left the door slightly open in the (Jackie) Kelly case, and it has occurred in England before. For this to occur it would require Turnbull to put Wentworth voters on notice before the poll that Newhouse was ineligible.
Having raised genuine concerns about Newhouse, the Coalition broadened the attack to 12 other candidates who websites indicated were still on the public payroll (based on investigative public records searches, as Andrew Robb would have it): Sharon Thiel (Kalgoorlie), Mark Reynolds (Tangney), Tony Zappia (Makin), Belinda Neal (Robertson), Yvette D’Ath (Petrie), Ross Daniels (Ryan), Garry Parr (Hinkler) and Shayne Neumann (Blair), Rob Mitchell (McEwen), Alan Neilan (Kennedy), Mark Buttigieg (Cook) and Peter Conway (ACT Senate). Most seem to have had little trouble refuting the claims, Reynolds saying his piece in comments on this site.
More and worse late-campaign desperation from Lindsay, where Labor operatives have photographed outgoing member Jackie Kelly’s husband Gary Clark and party state executive member Jeff Egan distributing a bogus pamphlet, purportedly from Muslim extremists praising Labor’s support for the unjustly treated Bali bombers.
Meanwhile, Michael Bachelard of The Age reports being contacted by a Liberal campaign source spreading smears about Rodney Cocks, Labor’s candidate for the finely placed outer Melbourne seat of La Trobe.
Michael McKenna of The Australian reports that the Liberals are so alarmed about their outer Brisbane seat of Forde, which outgoing member Kay Elson won by 13.0 per cent in 2004, they have abandoned their candidate and told the local to get behind Nationals candidate Hajnal Ban, who has won traction with voters. At the end of October, Tony Wright of The Age wrote that Liberal polling from the seat was whispered to have sent a bolt of fear through the party.
A study of Australian voting patterns by the Australian National University’s Andrew Leigh and Oxford University’s Amy King finds that female candidates in major parties tend to get 1.5% fewer votes than their male colleagues, all other things being equal.
Nick Xenophon’s seemingly effortless journey to the Senate has been rudely interrupted by Ann Bressington, the unanticipated victor of a second No Pokies seat at last year’s state election. According to John Wiseman of The Australian, Bressington claims Xenophon guaranteed that her entry into politics would cost her nothing, only to tell her after she was elected he wanted $50,000. She has also criticised him for abandoning state parliament just after he became eligible for the pension granted upon 10 years’ service.
How can Newhouse’s staffer (who looked very pretty in her Kev07 Tshirt in the OZ) be anti-semitic. Arabs are semitic to.
Glen- The Rodent is reaping what he has sown. if I ever saw poetic justice, this is it.
1084 Jeez, hadn’t seen that news, Showson. It just gets better and better. Yup, time to cut ’em loose and save North Sydney. Or not.
I can’t believe that Dana Vale is going to hang on in Hughes, so that makes me very skeptical about Andrew Landeryou’s inside info regarding Labor winning 12 in NSW.
Glen, if it was a labor letterboxer caught out doing this I’m sure you’d be happy with all the time the media spent on it. BTW it looks like the LNP are going to get more than enough air time tonight? 🙂
Frank Frederic,
Howard can’t play the race card this time, coz if he does, he loses his own seat – which is as bad for him as losing government overall.
I don’t understand how this would play to ‘red-neck’ voters at all. It’s not being covered as true, in fact Howard has said it’s not true. Instead it’s being covered as a shonky and possibly illegal and desperate election ploy.
So these voters are going to say… Look! The Liberal Party produced fake brochures… I’m going to vote for them now!
1092 SO,
An interesting (and correct) point, but the point is Howard came out of it all pretty well, on the whole. And there was no way he (or anyone else) could have got the “Liberal Party” label off the ballots.
JOM 1075
Lets say the Liberals are crushed this weekend and there is hardly a Liberal aligned political job left in the country. How will all you Liberal voters feel then?
You will soon find out.
i think the libs have retreated to warringah…
Couple of new threads up, so I’m closing this one.