Roy Morgan has released a mid-week phone survey of 574 respondents on attitudes to the party leaders, which has 55 per cent favouring Kevin Rudd against 30 per cent for Malcolm Turnbull. Kevin Rudd has a 55 per cent approval rating and 31 per cent disapproval; Malcolm Turnbull’s figures are 43 per cent and 24 per cent. The sample produced a two-party result of 57-43 in favour of Labor: no further detail on voting intention is provided.
UPDATE: Aristotle in comments points out that primary vote figures from the survey are available on Morgan’s poll trends page: Labor 46.5 per cent, Coalition 34.5 per cent, Greens 8 per cent, others 4.5 per cent.
I’m pretty sure that Turnbull isn’rt in any hurry to find out.
You can bet that he has been on the phone to Farmer to kindly request that he stick it out till the next election.
“isn’t”!
[Dario if we didnt lose it in 2007 when everything was falling, i cannot see why we’d lose it now.]
Er, perhaps because Pat Farmer’s profile kept it afloat?
It’s extremely unusual for an incumbent government to win a seat off the opposition at a by-election. No federal Labor government has ever done so. Non-Labor has done it twice (Kalgoorlie 1920, Maranoa 1921). I don’t think Labor would win a by-election anywhere, at any level, in NSW right now, let alone in an opposition-held seat.
Record of federal by-elections during ALP governments:
ALP retained: 15
ALP lost to non-Labor: 7*
ALP lost to independent: 1**
Non-Labor retained: 20
Non-Labor lost to Labor: 0
Independent to Labor: 1***
* Boothby 1911, Grampians 1915, Wide Bay 1915, Parkes 1931, Bass 1975, Adelaide 1988, Canberra 1995
** Wills 1992
** Franklin 1929
The other thing about farmer – to say he is not very bright would be to totally overestimate him.
Have you witnessed him in action at all.
With him living (well) out of his electorate in Mosman if there was a by-election there would have to be some sort backlash.
If there was a by-election in Macarthur now there would be a substantial swing to the Liberals. Why would the place of residence of the *former* member have anything to do with the result? The by-election would be all about “sending Labor a message.”
356
No, it’d be about the 2 or 3 percent of people who got swept up in the excitement of a change of government but no longer feel the same way about Rudd & Co. They’re all over the country. (it says nothing about this particular government and everything about voting patterns in general)
Don’t discount the fact that interest rates dropped for once under Rudd, the insertion of funds into the mortgage industry ($4b) widely touted to cause further downwards pressure on rates, the John Howard factor is gone and the fact that the sky hasn’t fallen in under Labor as was touted by JWH and co. during 2007 election. This may be worth a few percent to Labor as well. If we get another interest rate cut in the next month or two, could make for a very interesting by election.
Tom
Win or lose – if even at least the same swing as from the election is maintained it will be a worrying message to the Liberals, that the nation wide swing at the election has some permanence about it. A loss by the Liberals would put a DD on the backburner again for Rudd, as a threat to the LNP in the Senate, as they won’t be as confident of a ‘correcting’ swing back to the Liberals.
So it would be of benefit for Labor to campaign very hard in that seat if it comes up.
TP, neither 359 or 360 make much sense. There is no conceivable way Labor would win a Macarthur by-election. Labor didn’t even contest Lyne or Mayo, and they might not bother with Macarthur or any other Coalition held seat either. Why volunteer for a defeat and give the Libs a boost?
I doubt Labor would win Macarthur at a by-election. If they didn’t win it at the last election I find it hard to imagine they’d win it now when it bears no outcome on a change to government. I’d imagine Labor would still field a candidate in the seat but there’d be a quite substantial swing against them I’d imagine. Then again there have been some by-elections that have defied this in the past, for instance one or two by-elections in WA actually swung heavily towards Labor in the past term from memory, which more reflected the poor performance of the state opposition at the time. I don’t think the federal Opposition are performing that badly in comparison.
I doubt Labor would bother in Macarthur, why spend good money on a meaningless by-election? What have they to gain by winning the seat?
Well if you’re looking at it from one perspective they ought to field a candidate because they should offer the people of Macarthur a genuine alternative.
Labor couldn’t win either way: either they get mocked for chickening out of a contest in a 0.7 per cent seat, or they cop a swing. If I were the Libs I’d be nudging Farmer out the door, for more reasons than one.
LTEP, WA Labor picked up a 1 per cent swing at the Peel by-election in February 2007. The only other contested by-election last term was Victoria Park (vacated by Geoff Gallop), where there was a swing of about 4 per cent to the Liberals.
They I assume will do some polling there. It is a benefit if there are indications that they can be competitive. And if they can maintain the same margins then there is a message in that too for the Liberal party, that may make them a little uncertain about the nature of the last election. Was it just getting rid of Howard or is it a more permanent shift in peoples attitudes. Strategically it is worth it if a close result can be achieved.
It’s not out of the question that Labor could win in Macarthur… they didn’t do so badly in the recent council elections in Campbelltown / Liverpool compared to elsewhere, and Pat Farmer may have annoyed his constituents with his whinging. On the other hand, the new Liberal guy won’t be Farmer, and Labor probably can’t do that much better than the 10% swing they already got. It’ll be interesting, though… the first by-election that doesn’t involve a senior minister in the last government (unlike Gippsland / Lyne / Mayo). Labor might not win, but they’d be fools to sit this one out.
By the way. According to Wiki, Ben Raue (who I’ve seen post here sometimes) was the Greens candidate for the seat at the last election. You around, Ben? 🙂
By-elections are fought on local issues, why buy into a shit fight? Howard never did. In the extremely unlikely event that Labor wins – so what. Another backbencher in a Govt with a comfortable majority.
Leave it ’till the next general election. When Federal issues are paramount. Then win it.
By-election swings don’t necessarily tell us anything about who will win the next election. Sometimes they do (Bass 1975, Canberra 1995), but sometimes they don’t (Adelaide 1988, Ryan 2001). I think Labor would be clobbered at any by-election in NSW at the moment, but I doubt that would mean anything in terms of how NSW seats will go in 2010.
fair enough then – but if there is a chance they should run with it. It will be interesting to see how much of that 10% sticks.
Macarthur 0.7%
I would expect with increasing cost of living and the condition of the NSW State Government would see the Liberal Party hold the seat! the Liberals could rub it right in by preselecting the Nurse whom they had run in the Macquarrie Fields by-election.
The above list from Adam listing the seats that have changed was somewhat Interesting, the thing I note is most of the seats that changes were or I image them to be rural seats, I’m not sure if I’m reading Adams list correctly.
I’m not sure if Adam has made a typo but are you of the view that the ALP could lose the seats of Auburn and Cabamatta!
There’s no pattern in the seats Labor has lost at by-elections. Some were rural (Wide Bay) some were urban (Adelaide). It’s mainly a matter of chance. If a by-election happens when a government is unpopular, it will be lost. If they don’t want to elect a Lib, they’ll vote for an independent (Wills) or a Green (Cunningham).
I haven’t seen anything on the upcoming NSW state by-elections, but I think would Labor is in grave danger of losing all of them, including Cabramatta – not necessarily to a Liberal, but certainly to someone. Labor lost Bass Hill in similar circs in 1988. I don’t know who is running. A local indentity running as an independent perhaps?
[There’s no pattern in the seats Labor has lost at by-elections]
The sample size is a little too small to make any sort of real analysis
Can someone shed some light on the Dixon by-election in 1993 (shortly after the Federal election)? I would’ve expected there would’ve been a fairly good chance Labor could’ve lost that seat at the by-election… but obviously not… was there a factor at play there (e.g. Liberal not running a candidate)?
Federal Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull says the Government has Coalition support for a plan to boost the mortgage market.
The Government is making $4 billion available to lenders in exchange for high-quality mortgages.
The global turmoil has shut down the market that non bank lenders relied upon to fund their loans.
Mr Turnbull says he is pleased by Treasurer Wayne Swan’s decision to adopt what was an Opposition proposal.
“He has bi-partisan support on that,” he said.
“Naturally we’ll want to work through the details and see how it will operate, see how effective it will be but we look forward to working with the Government on that.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/09/28/2376286.htm?section=justin
Yet again we have the “Labor pinches economic guru’s policy”. Liars. I eventually watched Q&A today, and Talcum revised what he said to Oakes.
He is a fraud. 🙁
LTEP, that wasn’t actually a by-election: it was a supplementary election held a month after the election proper because a candidate died between the closure of nominations and polling day. Michael Lavarch ended up retaining the seat very narrowly for Labor after a swing of 2.9 per cent to Liberal candidate Bruce Flegg, later to re-emerge as state Liberal leader.
Next time Labor is accused of “doing nothing to put downward pressure on interest rates” they can point to the $4 billion cash injection as a concrete measure which, if rates do go down, actually, and measurably worked.
All this argey-bargey about who thought of it first coming from the Opposition is clearly petty-minded. While Bishop plays “Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers” with what is almost literally an economy-saving measure, and “thinks about” agreeing with it (whatever that means… the measure is legislated already) Labor gets on with the job, unable to afford to indulge in churlish gamesmanship. It’s a pretty picture.
With the pressure mounting on Fielding, even now from his own side, he would be a brave man to continue blocking the Surplus if it got in the way of a $4 billion measure to help working families in favour of Porsche and luxury 4WD drivers, and/or young female binge drinkers and tradies hooked on alcopops and Bundy Cokes.
It’s a potential meltdown for the Opposition.
Turnbull’s is an old corporate management trick – steal credit for the work and intelligence of others and make it appear your own in order to promote yourself. It is what you do when you have no abilities or work of your own.
Labor should state it exactly like that. Mr Turnbull should answer his own exam questions rather than cheat by looking over the shoulder of others.
“Naturally we’ll want to work through the details and see how it will operate, see how effective it will be but we look forward to working with the Government on that.”
Reply to Talcum – Naff Off, you are the Opposition, remember the people rejected your mob last Nov. Get out of the way, we will do what we are elected to do.
Get your own house in order, sack Abbott and Minchin – do you have the stones to do it?
It’s very easy to disparage oppositions for being irrelevant. They did it to us, we do it to them. Ho hum. Oppositions are by definition irrelevant, but let’s beware of the same hubris that did for Howard. Demos is tossing and turning in his sleep, and we won’t know who has been whispering in his ear until he wakes up in 2010.
[Turnbull’s is an old corporate management trick – steal credit for the work and intelligence of others and make it appear your own in order to promote yourself. ]
It looks that way, Thomas. Separately tell a hundred people they’ll win money on the horses if they trial your form analysis software, and half a dozen of them will win. They’ll think you’re a genius and buy the the full version. It’s a reliable old scam exposed on The Investigators years ago, several times.
Put out enough ideas and one of them is bound to be right. It’s up to the spin doctors to make sure the punters only remember the correct predictions, and forget the wrong ones. When (inevitably) the chumps start losing, the scammers (if they can be found) always claim, “You didn’t follow the instructions to the letter.”
Turnbull is effectively saying, “Well, my first idea worked, and I’m prepared to sell you my ‘Fix The Economy’ software, but there are conditions.” Imagining, for a moment, that the government would be stupid enough to go all gooey and bi-partisan with him, every time something failed, or even didn’t work as well as expected, Turnbull would be out there bull-roaring, “They didn’t do it to the letter of what I told them to do.” It’s the classic scammer’s “out”.
Turnbull’s original suggestion was made in the context of massive bailouts of totally bankrupt companies by President Bush. At the time he made it to suggest, imply or even open to interpretation that Australia needed the same thing with its major institutions would have caused a local market meltdown. Swan had no choice but to go in hard and classify Turnbull’s comments as unhelpful, or even dangerous. Thinking out loud, and bizoid merchant bank brainstorming are no substitute for taking responsibility for running the economy. I doubt whether anyone will really believe Swan only did what he did after Turnbull first put the idea in his head. Swan has a right to run the economy without this kind of interference and sideline kibbitzing from someone who has no responsibility if the idea fails.
Bushfire Bill, the luxury car tax increase has already passed. The Government, do however, face rocky times ahead with both the so-called ‘alcopops’ tax and the Fuelwatch scheme in the Senate. It’ll also be interesting to see what happens with the revided Medicare Levy surcharge thresholds bill and, eventually, the pharmaceutical cost recovery bill (I suspect both will pass, with the thresholds bill meeting resistance from the Opposition).
Trying to enact legislation for the so-called Carbon Pollution Reduction scheme will be a nightmare I’d imagine, particularly if Fielding continues his position of negativing a bill on the first second reading and agreeing to it, with changes that could’ve been asked for at the first occasion, on a second occasion.
Oppositions are not irrelevant. They are the alternative Govt. When the current mob start acting like an alternative they will no longer be irrelevant.
Sadly at the moment they are totally irrelevant, they just have not realised it yet.
I had chance to hear Gillard on the wireless this morning and I note that commentators were being a little mischievous in saying how good she was at being PM.
Julia said that she enjoyed and I am sure she did – it looked like it.
But I guess it is good for Labor’s future that there is some talent in the wings capable of effectively taking the reins. I do remember Bolt lamenting this very fact before the election when he said something like ‘have you seent the talent in the Labor party?’
Thus proving what an ignorant jerkoff Bolt is and always has been.
Swanny should come out with something like – Mr Turnbull ought to realise that cheating someone’s elses and claiming it as your own is not the same as having your own ideas. It is the thing lacking in with Labor (and Obama for that matter) the quick reveal all phrase that doesn’t require people to pay attention for a minute or two.
We know Talcum does not stand up for the things he believes are correct, Kyoto, Apology, Fuel Excise, Pensions to name a few.
This will become a critical flaw and he will be relegated to the waste pile of politics. He stands for nothing, you do not become PM just because you want to.
What governing parties mean when they call on the opposition to “act responsibly” is “agree with us and don’t make trouble.” No opposition ever won an election following that advice. “The first duty of an opposition is to oppose” (Churchill, I think). Turnbull knows that. His path to the next election is to make life as difficult as possible for Labor, using the Senate and any other ammunition that comes to hand. Whether his positions are logical or not doesn’t matter very much this year or next. It is an old Labor saying: “When you want to hit a dog, any stick will do.” Only in 2010 will he need to come up with something positive.
NSW Health figures reveal 40,000 people are admitted to state hospitals each year for alcohol-related injuries and illnesses, Fairfax reported
The figures show young women aged 18 to 24 recorded the greatest increase in alcohol-related hospital admissions.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24414620-12377,00.html
Alcopops legislation passed with some kind of advertising restriction coming up folks.
Adam
Talcum will NOT be opposition leader in 2010. 🙂
Uh-huh. Who will?
I stand corrected on the LCT, thanks to Itep. Silly of me.
The point I was trying to make is that the measures these guys are opposing are assumed to be unpopular. That’s their meme, and the media obligingly prints that narrative verbatim.
But every time a poll is taken on these issues, the reverse is proved to be the case (e.g. the recent Newspoll on alcopops). I’d suggest its the same situation on “The Prime Tourist” and even the pensions issue: battlers out there want that Surplus as big as possible. They’ve bought the “Big Surplus = Economic Buffer” line, and don’t want their homes threatened by ideological objections from a reckless Opposition. We forget that the likes of Fielding and Xenophon only scored a tiny percentage of votes, and for a good reason: the voters don’t like them very much. This is the flaw in all the “Oncer” stories we read… these guys are despised by the general electorate, and I’d reckon most of their antics are similarly despised.
Ru
I beg to differ
Talcum is there come hell or high water
(any good takeover involves hands on running)
Bushfire Bill, who commissioned the Newspoll on alcopops?
Anyone who thinks the “Anyone but Turnbull” faction of the Liberal Party is about to roll over and play dead has rocks in their head.
The white anting of his leadership has begun already, Milne’s piece about him opposing the pension stuff is the latest example. (Denied by Talcum – but damage done). Someone leaked it to the Dwarf.
Who will lead? There are heaps with the baton in their knapsack. Nelson, Bishop, Hockey, Abbott to name a few.
Talcum was forced into the leadership – he did not seek it, or want it at this time. He is the next for the chop.
They have no other than Turnbull and, unless he starts the Republican debate and calls Workchoices type IR totally dead, he will be there at the end. Brendan is probably planning his return hoping to be a Bradbury. 🙂
Yes – should never under estimate the nastiness of the hard right.
Ru
Talcum is basically aiming to reform from the top without scaring the gee gees
The howard faction is being slowly denied oxygen and proof positive is the fact that half the old cabinet is gone with from memory only a few offenders left.
whilst not convinced the fibs are a chance come 2010,talcum has the big chance to reform whilst the mandate is fresh
Farmer wont be the last to be pushed out IMHO
I think you guys might be misjudging the Liberals. They would do anything to win, even if that means falling in behind a leader they find unpalatable. If they think Malcolm is the man who might have a chance of getting them back into power, then they will keep him in the job. Indeed, if they thought he gives them a whiff of a chance they would refuse to let him go!
Remember Costello’s observation:
[Costello argues the Liberals are captive of “a cult of the leader”, which he contrasts with Labor’s “cult of the party”. Labor removes the leader when necessary; the Liberals, argues Costello, are the leader’s captive. Costello is not sure that this can be reformed – “it’s a cultural thing”.]
http://www.smh.com.au/news/peter-hartcher/a-long-conversation-about-no-one/2008/09/11/1220857737344.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
Cossie is a bit of a goose, and no leader himself. But what he says seems correct: look at the messiah treatment dished up to the feet of Howard.