Morgan: 61.5-38.5

This week’s Morgan poll combines two weekends’ worth of face-to-face polling, producing a large sample of 1891 voters. Labor leads 61.5-38.5 on two-party preferred (with Labor down 1 per cent on last week’s phone poll and 0.5 per cent on the previous face-to-face), and 54.5 per cent to 33.5 per cent on the primary vote.

Other news:

• Voters in two of the districts which form Tasmania’s 15-member Legislative Council, Huon and Rosevears, will go to the polls tomorrow to rubber-stamp the re-election of sitting independents Paul Harriss and Kerry Finch. Tasmanian super-pundits Peter Tucker and Kevin Bonham have more here and here. I’ll have something up tomorrow, including my annual audit of upper house divisions and half-hearted live coverage of the count.

• Antony Green’s ABC Elections page has been given a revamp. From this I learn for the first time that draft redistribution proposals for the Northern Territory parliament were unveiled last week, on which Antony has much more.

• The Lindsay pamphlet case came before a Sydney court on Tuesday. Greg Chijoff, estranged husband of Liberal candidate Karen Chijoff, has pleaded guilty and will be sentenced next week. Jackie Kelly’s husband Gary Clark and Right faction powerbroker Jeff Egan have pleaded not guilty and will be back in court in late May. One of the remaining two charged has sought an adjournment, and the other has had his charge dismissed by Magistrate Pat O’Shane, who unfortunately felt it necessary to complain of a “political climate of divisiveness and disharmony” from which the country had “moved on”. She was on firmer ground in complaining that the penalty provided by Section 328 of the Electoral Act – a $1000 fine – was inadequate for the alleged offences, though whether her proposed new offence of “racial slander” would be a suitable remedy is another matter.

• As the new government moves to reform public election funding arrangements that boost Pauline Hanson’s coffers each time she runs for the Senate, Glenn Milne reveals Hanson has moved $200,000 of such funding out of a bank account for her United Australia Party and into one controlled by herself and a friend. Hanson, who should know a thing or two by now about the public funding laws, insists it’s all above board.

• Thomarse in comments answers (courtesy of News Radio) an oft-heard question: the Federal Court will resume hearing Labor’s appeal against the Liberals’ 12-vote victory in McEwen on May 24.

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. View all posts by William Bowe