That non-existent Morgan poll discussed in the previous post has now shown its face four days behind schedule. The phone survey of an unusually small sample of 618 respondents supports last week’s Newspoll finding that some of the gloss has come off Labor’s lead, which is at 47 per cent to 37 per cent on the primary vote and 58-42 on two-party preferred. This is down from 62-38 at the Morgan face-to-face poll published the previous Friday and 62.5-37.5 at the previous phone poll from mid-April, and is on both measures Labor’s weakest result since the election.
In other news, News Limited reports that Alexander Downer is “expected to quit Parliament within days”, having “delayed his departure until after Treasurer Wayne Swan tonight outlines Labor’s first Budget in 12 years, so as to avoid distracting from the Coalition’s response to it”. This of course will mean a by-election for his South Australian seat of Mayo.
I’d like to make an early prediction that the Liberals will increase their margin in Mayo once ol’ Alex has left.
I dunno. Apparently Dolly was quite popular in his own seat. Of couse, I have no idea why…
The silverest of silver spoons? Though I do remember that memorable election where the Democrats actually threatened in Mayo. I can still remember Natasha Stott-Despoja breathlessly talking about how “this is Democrat heartland”.
What I’m curious about is why the Courier-Mail got the story. It’s a Queensland newspaper. Mayo’s in SA. *shrugs* Maybe this is their idea of keeping it “under wraps” – if they really didn’t want to distract from the Budget response, why was it leaked? Assuming the reporter’s not just causing mischief.
Maybe it genuinely leaked by accident. If you’re retiring you would probably do things that would make it hard to hide.
I think all the News papers have it.
Maybe they’re hoping for a budget bounce from a tough Swan budget? If Swan delivers on his promises Labor’s vote might well go up again though. I can just imagine the Liberal response if the budget is reasonable:
“I think the way Labor has delivered on its promises in this budget is despicable and a betrayal of every coalition candidate in coming by-elections”.
Any thoughts on who Labor’s candidate would be in Mayo? They’d have to be a chance.
“so as to avoid distracting from”
except that now it is a distraction… 🙂
“I can just imagine the Liberal response if the budget is reasonable:”
They have already started, calling it the ‘anti mother and pro bludger’ budget. I heard Abbott, nelson and Allbull on telly.
how could the public vote these obviously compassionate people out.
tony why did you wait so long to show your heart,though i suspect your motives are less than humanitarian.
Can anyone please tell me how the Morgan Qualitative survey about Labor’s Economic credentials, Nelson’s and Rudd’s popularity etc is any use? The percentages quoted are well within the rusted-on voters of both sides, and it is what they would have said anyway irrespective of any present circumstances.
So honeymoon is over?? Still 58 to 42%. However, drop has to be related to Budget jitters.
It’s just a pity Abbott based his comments on an article that was total BS.
7 – It would good if it was pro-Poll bludger. 🙂 How about it Willy?
Basically the Liberal Party could stand a donkey in Mayo and still win the seat. The John Schumann happening was an aberration. It is very conservative country with just a tinge of Green/Red here and there. The electorate is still loaded with older generation voting Liberals who still worship Sir Thomas Playford as though he was still the Premier of South Australia. If the Labor Party think they will win a by-election in Mayo, then they are being totally delusional.
I heard there was a high proportion of fishnet stocking factories in Mayo
Brenton.
isnt that the attitude that was taken at first in Bennelong?— after what happened there i don’t think any fortress on either side is impregnable!
pmsl mr. Squiggle, i think you may be right.
*Basically the Liberal Party could stand a donkey in Mayo and still win the seat. *
as indeed they did.
14 Bennelong is a city electorate, Mayo is not!
15 Tassieannie, you are correct, all Liberal candidates are donkeys! But I like ‘for real’ donkeys and not Liberal candidates!
13 If only there were fishnet stocking factories in Mayo, I would think there were possibilities for the future! Berlin here we come!!!!!
I was born and lived for 28 years in the Mayo electorate! I know the type of people who live there. I went to primary school with the current Member of Parliament who represents the state seat within Mayo . If he can be elected then the ALP can have little chance! Old stamping ground, know it well. Also, even though a possible Federal by-election , there are hints of the Rann Government starting to be very on the nose! WORKCOVER!!!!! Very unpopular Attorney General and Treasurer!!!!! etc etc etc
Turnbull on, got up and walked away, so f*ng irrelevant, blustering and ‘swingeing’ his way through. Great effort Swannie, leave these toads drowning in your wake.
At long last we have a Govt with some nation-building ideals, as opposed to the disgusting welfare for the rich mentality of Rattus Rattus and Co.
It was a Bob Carr budget. Didn’t offend anyone, but wont do anything for the economy either.
if Toolman on the ABC couldnt really criticise it, it must be a good budget
17
A good night for Swan to post his two of his best performances.
He kept it simple and clear generally. The speech was well written. The ALP team was well briefed and at least looked like a team compared to the bunch of schoolboys over the other side. His interview with Kerry was spot on – one very cool cucumber tonight.
Allbull needs to cut down on the coffee, jargon and extremism. At some point he’s going to have to get back to basics to convince anyone outside his own group of friends he’s got any economic credentials whatsoever, because the outrageously blatant political spin world he’s in at the moment might work on the converted, but it’s doing nothing for those on the fence or the other side. Maybe he is safer in the leadership and away from the treasury?
It was a nothing no frills budget, which was about ensuring that Labor can run the economy the way the markets and media moguls want them to- conservatively, allowing the rich to continue to benefit from government handouts.
Turnbull, on the one hand he has been carrying on that the Government should not cut spending and tonight he is saying the complete opposite- what does he stand for in regards to Labors’ economic plans? It seems he is confused or wanting to have his bread buttered on both sides.
19
I reeeeally like the way Toolman suggested Rudd thank the Chinese for the revenue, like it’s something to apologise for.
Is he a racist, or a dangerous idiot? Either way – it’s hardly chief political correspondent style.
Wouldn’t you just love to be on an overseas delegation with him? Talk about embarrassing.
Any of the big summit ideas in the budget?
ShowsOn at 24 ‘A Week with no Morgan’ thread.
[“Oh, I’m sensitive am I Michelle? I am standing here looking so sensitive aren’t I – furrowed brow, worried? How sensitve do I look Michelle? You ought to go and get a new prescription,” he told her]
I do believe I heard today Costello telling Sam, I assume Maiden, that he loves her, he really does.
I am sure Michelle is endeared. Yet she, unlike another, will continue to provide vision, perspective not available to the unspectacular journalists and reporters who have yet to realise that the Australian world has changed.
Particularly unilluminating, Chris Ullman, rounding at the end of the Budget, saying that the Treasurer needs to send a big thank you to China. Cannot imagine that he would be saying that to the olden days Treasurer.
And wasn’t it pleasant to have a Treasurer who represents bread, not circuses.
The day was only marred by the unusual and contemptible appearance of yesterday’s man.
Turnbull with Kerry O’Brien now, proving his non-economic-genius status:
“Its a high-taxing, high-spending inflationary budget”. Well even if thats true (and spending growth has been reduced so part B is false) how is high taxing inflationary? The whole point of standard economic theory is to raise tax when times are good, save the surplus, and spend it when times are bad. That is NOT inflationary. Increasing tax means people have less money to spend, hence less inflationary spending. Whether you agree with Swan’s initiatives or not, it isn’t inflationary. Arguably he could have gone further on spending cuts, but its certainly less inflationary than the last few Howard/Costello budgets. Turnbull was never an economist, just a salesman for share funds, and it shows.
For two years Heather Ridout was carrying on out workchoices and how we needed to cut wages and introduce workplace reform, continually she espoused the Coalitions’ IR reforms and now Labor is appointing her to a number of reviews and committees.. Pathetic.
onimod, I have a totally irrational desire to slap Uhlmann with a puce herring, possibly a beige yurt, something with a bit more grunt than a bitterfly, that’s for sure.
I felt the same way about Nullman’s comment, so totally uncalled for and nonsensical. When are we going to clean these termites and neo-con parasites out of the once great ABC?
Marky, remember to keep your friends close and you enemies even closer. This lot are no idiots or uneducated, unlike say, the pineapple and chicken party. Sniggle.
Unfortunately not in the to distance future…
http://www.abc.net.au/corp/board/board_members.htm
Talking about the ABC what did they get in the budget? I can’t seem to find it anywhere. It’s a great budget leaving the Liberals with nowhere to go. Can someone email a copy to Glen?
26 marky – Linden Baynes Johnson once said that it was better to have your enemies inside the tent pissing out rather than outside the tent pissing in. A very good strategy, obviously one that is a a little too sophisticated for a far lefty like yourself.
The problem is that your enemies can pass information on to others.
A budget about politics and not about vision, yep love these budgets…
marky marky marky
It must be disappointing for you, that Heather Ridout turned tail the moment the election result was known. Looked, as I recall, on Lateline, absolutely delighted.
She, if you recall, was the one who did not, not support business funding of pro Work Choice legislation. I certainly did not agree with her pro Liberal otherwise stance, but maybe that’s what they do.
And maybe what they do, unlike certain journalists, is get it.
As the Vic Libs are demonstrating only all too clearly, marky, your friends can do the same.
[As the Vic Libs are demonstrating only all too clearly, marky, your friends can do the same.]
And the WA Liberals with Sniffwell.
So marky marky, how would you have them do it? Spend like the drunken sailor, drive the dollar down the plughole, force interest rates even higher. They know that they must act fiscally responsibly in order to have any chance of re-election. They have now highlighted just how bad the Libs were as economic managers, it was only the right wing media that spun the reverse and protected them.
This government had no, repeat, no choice but to bring down this budget, most of their choices vanished the day that the Rodent announced his irresponsible tax cuts. Politics is still, and always, the art of the possible.
Basil, I’m with you on the ABC. Oddly, there are people like Red Symmons on Melbourne 774, who are IMV, genuinely funny, also do some genuine interviews, who are under-rated as compared to to other presenters. It’s weird, because I think you get more out of listening to Red than you do from Uhlmann.
All parties have people within their ranks who stab one another in the back, it is just that some are better at hiding such behaviour than others.
Bet you right now labor front benchers are criticising or carping parts of the budget or asking why their ideas were not noticed. That is politics Zoom.
The factional office men in electoral offices do it every day, devising strategies to get members on side and to get votes for the next internal election. Politics is not about the public it is about factional number crunching.
Hit it on the head Basil when you said right wing media, and that is what this budget more or less is and the right wing media will love it…
Politics is about life, marky. I haven’t been in a workplace, sporting or service club, parents association, kindergarten committee, you name it, where politics hasn’t come into play – and that includes backstabbing AND number crunching.
But we were discussing the advisability or otherwise of bringing ‘enemies’ into the circle. It’s always a risk, of course, but one of those which pay off big time if your enemy is ‘turned’.
In my experience, more often than not it works. Being asked to come into the tent when you expected to stay outside is very flattering.
This excellent article was linked by Kina on the previous thread, worth reposting here for a commentary on the drunken sailors:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/what-shall-we-do-with-drunken-sailors-hangover/2008/05/12/1210444334544.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
marky, and the number crunching is about what? Who will best represent the views of the electorate? Compared to the selection process of the Libs. or Nats. ? The Labor Party may be flawed, but if you say you are are a Labor supporter, I don’t understand why you are unremittingly critical.
Yes correct, it happens everywhere.
Having someone like Ridout on a committee may also mean that your ideas are compromised or the actual idea you want is totally disregarded hence your enemies idea gets up. And my fear is that Ridouts’ ideas or ideological leanings could white ant the governments philsophical values.
A historical view of the current times might suggest that the Liberal opposition was starved of any intellectual capacity, as the behind the scenes players, of all political persuasions, were tied up working for the new government.
Maybe. Time will tell.
Critical because some of the people within the party are putting in place policies contrary to Labor beliefs…
For example privatisation of assets, cuts to jobs in the public service, banning of strikes… Labor was formed on the back of the unions and they are being shafted.
39 Harry, I must confess I get more these days out of the cartoonists (Bill Leak et al) and the satirists such as Jon Stewart than I do from these alleged journalists.
Apart from a few notable exceptions, George Mega being one, they are piles of crud driven by over-inflated egos. The fact that Hanoi Piers can call himself a journalist simply illustrates my point.
Mayo Culpa.
Probably not. As others have discerned, the Liberals have herded within it it, comforted by the larger and larger folds of Alexander. Though there are heaps of ferals. Should, god willing, he depart, the best hope is that someone, unlikely to be Labor, strikes a chord.
The people Rudd bring inside the tent are likely to be unavailable to his enemies. Better to have people like Ridout on the inside than working with the LNP at the next election.
Sun Tzu said: In the practical art of war, the best
thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact;
to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is
better to recapture an army entire than to destroy it,
to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire
than to destroy them.
Maybe Rudd is keeping hold of the old Liberal party govt support machine to deny them access to it.