Morgan: 59.5-40.5

Not exactly hot off the presses with this one, but Friday’s poll from Roy Morgan (who seem to have returned to their weekly polling habits of old) has Labor’s two-party lead at 59.5-40.5 compared with 60-40 the previous week. The primary vote movements are bigger than you would expect from this: Labor is down 2.5 per cent to 49 per cent, and the Coalition is up 1 per cent to 36.5 per cent. The slack is taken up by “independent/others”, up from 3.5 per cent to 6 per cent. Perhaps South Australians are telling survey takers they’ll vote for Nick Xenophon. Elsewhere:

• Speculation continues to mount that former WA Health Minister and Attorney-General Jim McGinty (left) will shortly be calling it a day, initiating a by-election in Fremantle to coincide with the state’s May 16 daylight saving referendum. On ABC television news, Peter Kennedy reported that rumoured preselection contender Peter Tagliaferri (right) met with McGinty and ALP state secretary Simon Mead to “discuss the possible vacancy”. However, Alan Carpenter is offering point-blank denials to speculation he might also vacate his seat of Willagee, which puts the prospect of a dangerous preselection stoush between Tagliaferri and LHMWU state secretary Dave Kelly back on the agenda. Steve Grant of the Fremantle Herald reports:

Alan Carpenter says he will remain in state parliament till the next election. He ruled out the possibility of a by-election for his safe Labor seat of Willagee … He shrugged off speculation that he and Fremantle MP Jim McGinty were contemplating mid-term retirement to make way for new Labor blood, “you might not believe me, but often I’m the last person to hear about these things”. It seems Jandakot Liberal MP Joe Francis could be more tuned in to Labor machinations than the former premier, becoming the third person to tell the Herald that LHMWU secretary Dave Kelly was being groomed to take over a Labor seat.

• What’s more, Robert Taylor of The West Australian has mused on the possibility of star Gallop/Carpenter government minister Alannah MacTiernan moving to federal politics by taking on Don Randall in Canning, where redistribution has shaved the Liberal margin from 5.6 per cent to 4.3 per cent.

• Staying in WA, the Liberal Party is having an interesting time dealing with jockeying ahead of preselection for the safe southern suburbs seat of Tangney. Sitting member Dennis Jensen (left) lost the preselection vote ahead of the last election to Matt Brown, former chief-of-staff to Defence Minister Robert Hill, but the result was overturned by prime ministerial fiat. As Robert Taylor puts it, “this time there’s no John Howard and Dr Jensen looks decidedly shaky”. Against this backdrop, local Liberal branches have been inundated with membership applications from “Muslim men”, who are believed – certainly by the Brown camp – to be enthusiasts for the incumbent. A compromise reached at the state executive saw admission granted to half the applicants, who can apparently thank Julie Bishop for arguing that “many of her east coast colleagues with big Muslim populations in their electorates were nervous about the outcome”. Taylor says a Brown supporter told him “the new members were associated with ‘strident anti-Israel statements’ from the Australian National Imams Council”.

• With independent MP Rory McEwen to call it a day, the Liberals would be pencilling in his seat of Mount Gambier as a soft target at next year’s state election. However, the Border Watch reports Liberal candidate Steve Perryman, the mayor of Mount Gambier, might face an independent challenge from Don Pegler, the mayor of Grant District Council, who has perhaps been inspired by Geoff Brock’s boilover in Frome. Grant covers the electorate’s extensive rural areas outside of the City of Mount Gambier, although the latter accounts for three times as many voters.

• Andrew Landeryou at VexNews offers a colourful and detailed account of the gruelling Liberal preselection jockeying in Kooyong.

• Landeryou also notes conflicting reports on the prospect of a Right-backed preselection challenge by Noel McCoy against Phillip Ruddock in Berowra.

• Andrew Leigh and Mark McLeish have published a paper at Australian Policy Online which asks a most timely question: Are State Elections Affected by the National Economy? Using data from 191 state elections, they find a positive correlation between low unemployment and success for the incumbent, “with each additional percentage point of unemployment (or each percentage point increase over the cycle) reducing the incumbent’s re-election probability by 3-5 percentage points”. Furthermore, “what matters most is not the performance of the state economy relative to the national economy, but the state economy itself”. That being so, it seems voters “systematically commit attribution errors – giving state leaders too much blame when their economy is in recession, and too much credit when it is booming”.

• The Parliamentary Library has published a note on the redistribution of WA’s federal electorates.

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.

632 comments on “Morgan: 59.5-40.5”

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  4. Dio

    I actualy didn’t recognise your previous avatar or its significance till you explained it now. I almost feel like suggesting that you change it back if you will – Falcone was an admirable person, who deserves to be remembered.

  6. Bree

    I agree APRA was sensible but I pesonally think that Costello can’t take all the credit. For one thing APRA isn’t perfect – its insurance regulation division had no idea until after the collapse of HIH (read the commission of inquiry report). Australia’s economic regulation is mainly due to a competent and professional Treasury and RBA staff that has survived purges that sometimes accompany changes of government in other departments. It is the sort of expertise built up over a preiod of time, not just one Act.

    Costello didn’t always institute effective regulation. No doubt Bree is aware of the compromises in the CLERP 9 reforms earlier this decade where they whimped out of regulating executive salaries (non-binding votes by shareholders) and investment funds (self regulation!). So yes our banks are well regulated, thanks mainly to the public servants that watch over them, adn have done since before APRA. But lets not kid ourselves that all aspects of our financial governance are a model of integrity, or that any one politican can take all the credit.

  11. Janet is incapable of a rational argument. Every time she writes about any topic with two sides, she says one side is right because I agree with it and the other side is wrong because I don’t agree with it. That’s as sophisticated as it gets. She’s never swayed a single voter.

  12. When was the last time Janet A wrote anything that influenced anything?

    And is this the same person who wrote “John Howard it’s time to go”? I guess she was doing that just for the good of the party she professes to love…

  13. the media isnt going to let sleeping dogs lie, it’s going to be a tough week in question time for the coalition this week, Hockey will try bluster and i’m cringing at the thought of Pyne’s whiney high pitched voice pleading to the speaker.
    did you know his dad Dio? does he take after him? or do we blame his maternal anscestors? someone has to be to blame for foisting that whimpish scrap of a man on us. 🙂

    http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=755457

  14. Diogs,

    She wants John Howard to come back. She’s clearly at one of those levels of grief that we hear a lot about. I think it’s the one where you go completely bonkers.

  15. costello HAS to be in big trouble if janet jumps forward in his defence. Is she seriously saying costello’s lack of contribution to the fibs since late 2007, in their time of dire need, is to be applauded ?

    Apparently free speech is not available to hewson – no wonder the article appeared in the fairfax papers.

  16. Dio

    The current avatar is the better one. Fascinating read on Wiki that you linked to.

    Funny about Janet, she didn’t address Hewsons points, except to acknowledge that there was an ongoing feud, struggle and tension between Turnbull and Costello that should be kept quite.

    Most of the article spent personally attacking Hewson, expressing love for Howard and she still harbours some strange deep seated bitterness to Keating.

  21. [If Hewson thinks that Peter Costello – or indeed the Liberal Party – is going to be swayed by his “Peter, you’ve got no balls” piece in the Sun-Herald, he is sadly mistaken on the little matter of his own importance. ]

    I can only assume that Janet have seen them. Good for her.

  22. JB

    I didn’t know his dad (he died before I became a doctor when he was in his fifties) but my dad knew him well (probably a Catholic thing, perhaps he went to Rostrevor). I’ll ask my dad who has only met Christopher once, when my sister was stabbed in Spain. Dad said CP was very helpful then.

  23. How many times, next week, will the speaker say “The Member for Sturt will resume his seat, there is no point of order”. ? 😉

  26. [ Bree
    Posted Sunday, February 22, 2009 at 6:35 pm | Permalink
    The Fairfax newspapers are a disgrace. They are a mouth piece for anti-Costello rant and suck up to Saint Kevin.]

    Hi Bree, I thought Kev was pretty good, but I hadn’t elevated him to sainthood yet – glad to see you approve 🙂

    Tom.

  28. Who is the political commentator who’s wife is a Liberal and standing for pre selection just curious,Alannah MacTiernan should stay on in Perth and boot Ripper out of the Leadership,at least she gets things done.
    I also think that the entire labour front bench when they were in Govt, bar Alannah should resign and get out to let new blood in,if Bree thinks that the bunch of incompetents that just got in at the last election will be voted back in I think she is sadly mistaken.
    All it takes is 2 by elections and Bye Bye Bumbling Barnett,and the massive bribe for the Nats,Costello kinda remind’s me of Bree they are both fools

  29. It is not only Mr Costello who is lazy, it is the reporters and commentators in our major media outlets.

    In the overall scheme of things the internal politics of the Liberal Party are irrelevant. Guys and Gals of “the media” wise up they are not the Govt.

    Is it too much to ask for people who write stuff about politics to stop acting like a bunch of mutant lemmings, feeding off each others stories until that is the only thing that matters?

    The Joe Hockey “gaffe” today was the ultimate in toad poo, they report the “gaffe” instead of the substance of his position (which is the real story – he has no position).

    Bizarre, lazy, self indulgent, but bad for the political debate, 🙁

  30. ruawake, thats whats going to be annoying, Pyne jumping up every two minutes squealing and waving his finger at the speaker, i dont think they’ve got used to a balanced speaker yet and think their compliant disgrace is still in the chair.

  31. Hewson’s article was appalling not because of its pervasive vitriol, but for its breathtaking irony. Here’s a guy, supposedly preaching about defending the stability of the party, publicly beheading one of it’s most accomplished members with infantile aspersions. Hewson is an imbecile.

  32. I must admit, it was quite exciting to read Hewson’s critique of Costello. Every word of it rings true: from the “no balls” comment, to “bone-lazy”, “self-indulgent memoirs”, to “would be nothing without Treasury”.

    This outburst is certain to deepen the rift in the Liberal Party if Costello does decide to say on. Though I would have thought his position after this would be untenable, according to his staffers he does intend to stick around.

    Has Hewson “pulled the trigger” on the Liberals, as presaged by Jack the Insider at the OO:

    [The Liberal Party now stands on the brink [of the abyss; on the verge of a schism that will make Labor’s split in 1955 look like a scuffle over the lamington recipes at the local CWA.

    All it needs is someone to pull the trigger. ]

    http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/jacktheinsider/index.php/theaustralian/comments/who_will_pull_the_trigger/

  34. No 179

    I agree to a large extent. Hockey’s Insiders performance wasn’t particularly strong and had Kerry O’Brien been interviewing, he would have fallen flat on his face.

    And I don’t why the media reported this “gaffe” – to me it initially seemed like Hockey was trying to avoid the use of the word “trillion”, thereafter causing him to mix up his words – unintentionally of course.

  35. The reason the media are so obsessed with the internal goings on of the Coalition is that Labor is giving them absolutely nothing. Rudd is totally on top of the agenda, the senior ministers are all performing well, the Cabinet is united, the ambitious are being kept busy, the backbench is not grumbling, there are no leaks. In 15 months there has been one change in the lineup with the departure of the invisible Murphy and the promotion of Arbib. Since Canberra has far too many political journalists and commentators being paid far too much to pursue far too few of the kind of easy colour-and-movement stories they like (since actual policy is too hard for most of them), they are naturally queuing up for the only show in town – the Coalition circus. And when the Coalition won’t give them stories quickly enough they beat them up out of thin air.

  36. Evan14 what got me with Rudd’s speach today was that he was loudly applauded before and after he spoke, the other speakers only got muted applause after their speeches.

  37. GP

    I don’t agree. Hewson would argue that his article was trying to get Costello to quit which would stabilise the party.

    I saw my dad yesterday, who thinks that John Howard is the best PM ever by a considerable margin, and he was spewing about Costello not quitting, or going for the leadership. He thinks Costello is damaging his own brand so much that he won’t be a success if/when he takes over the Libs.

    I got a lecture about needing the greatest Treasurer in history back in the saddle to stop Rudd from spending our country into eternal debt.

  38. Although his ‘Insiders’ interview was completely uninspiring, the Hockey ‘gaffe’ was absolutely nothing.

    It just left me wondering… THIS is the ‘great communicator’?

  39. [Here’s a guy, supposedly preaching about defending the stability of the party, publicly beheading one of it’s most accomplished members with infantile aspersions. Hewson is an imbecile.]

    GP, what does ‘infantile aspersions’ mean?

  40. Amigos, Hillary has been on the blower to Kev.
    [US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has taken time out during her trip to Asia to ring Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
    “They spoke about the terrible devastation of the bushfires in Victoria,” a spokesman for Mr Rudd’s office said.

    The pair spoke about the global financial crisis and the role of the G20, which next meets in London in April, in developing a response to the economic turmoil.]

    http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/clinton-calls-rudd-during-asia-trip-20090222-8eln.html

  41. [Hewson’s article was appalling not because of its pervasive vitriol, but for its breathtaking irony. Here’s a guy, supposedly preaching about defending the stability of the party, publicly beheading one of it’s most accomplished members with infantile aspersions. Hewson is an imbecile.]
    At least Hewson had the guts to be leader.

  42. No 187

    I sympathise with your father’s views, but by the same token, Hewson’s article is also breathtakingly naive if it seeks to achieve Peter Costello’s resignation. Why on earth would Costello do such a slanderous article any justice by submitting to its demands? It’s none other than supercilious imbecility from Hewson.

    No 189

    Peruse dictionary.com

  43. No 191

    Yes but he is a failed leader. He lost an election and he ran a disastrous campaign. Hewson has nothing to be proud about which is why he is now whoring himself in the media to avoid the plain reality of his failed past.

  47. Generic Person,

    He may, but going on his past refusals, the odds are against it.

    And if he does try, and fails, will you disparage him as you do Hewson?

    And if you castigate Hewson for a faulty and failed campaign, why not Howard for 2007?

  49. [Yes but he is a failed leader. He lost an election and he ran a disastrous campaign. ]
    He had the guts to take on the opposition leader position straight after the Liberals lost the 1990 election. However gutless he is, that makes him more politically courageous than Peter Costello.

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