Morgan: 59-41

The first Roy Morgan face-to-face poll in a fortnight shows Labor’s two party lead down from 61-39 to 59-41. Labor’s primary vote is down 1.5 per cent to 50 per cent, while the Coalition’s is up 3 per cent to 36.5 per cent. Possum detects a negative correlation between Morgan’s sample sizes and Coalition primary vote. I would observe that there are two clusters of sample sizes, around 900 and 1800, depending on whether the poll was from one weekend of polling or two (the latter being the case on this occasion). Perhaps the correlation tells us something about how Morgan decides whether to sit on its results for another week (conspiracy theories ahoy).

Elsewhere:

• Tune in for live coverage tomorrow night as voters in three of Tasmania’s 15 Legislative Council districts go to the polls. Independent Ivan Dean, who was approached by John Howard to run in Bass at the 2004 federal election, faces a strong challenge from independent competitors in Windermere, which covers outer Launceston and the eastern side of the Tamar Valley. The retirement of independent Norma Jamieson has produced a tight four-horse race in the Devonport seat of Mersey, the field including Jamieson’s daughter Carolynn. Bartlett government Treasurer Michael Aird is unlikely to be troubled in his bid to keep Derwent (outer Hobart and Derwent Valley) as one of four upper house seats held by Labor. In the regrettably unlikely event that you wish to discuss this, please do so on the dedicated thread. Further reading from Peter Tucker at Tasmanian Politics. Further coverage tomorrow from Antony Green.

• Gary Clark, husband of former MP Jackie Kelly, has been found guilty for his role in the Lindsay pamphlet scandal. This was for the benign-sounding charge of “distributing unauthorised electoral material”, which carries a fine of $750. Former Liberal powerbroker Jeff Egan was acquitted, the court accepting his explanation that he was not aware of the content of the pamphlets. Not content with that, Egan has launched a private prosecution (presumably because his complaints have failed to interest the authorities) for assault against the Labor “possé” who caught the Liberal trio in their act, which includes Senator Steve Hutchins.

Michelle Grattan of The Age reports that Josh Freydenberg has provided a formidable pair of referees in his application for the Liberals’ Kooyong preselection: John Howard and Andrew Peacock (the latter of whom held the seat from 1966 to 1994, in between Bob Menzies and Petro Georgiou).

• The Warrnambool Standard reports that Sarah Henderson, former host of The 7:30 Report and daughter of former state MP Ann Henderson, has entered the crowded field for the preselection in Corangamite. Others mentioned include former Kennett government minister Ian Smith; Graham Harris, head of the Liberals’ Corangamite electorate council; Victorian Farmers Federation president Simon Ramsay; “Internet expert and former Howard government adviser” Rod Nockles; Simon Price, unsuccessful Colac Otway Shire Council candidate and former electorate officer to Stewart McArthur; and Michael King, “Geelong businessman and owner of Kings Australia funeral services”.

• Peter Brent of Mumble comments on the audacity of Liberal Senator Michael Ronaldson expressing concern about the electoral roll in an excellent piece for Inside Story.

• After being reduced to the deadly third position on the Liberal ticket, conservative Tasmanian Senator Guy Barnett reportedly has his eyes on Bass, which Labor’s Jodie Campbell won from Michael Ferguson in 2007.

• If you thought Possum’s booth maps was dope, wait till you see Nathan Lambert’s Google Earth files.

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.

567 comments on “Morgan: 59-41”

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  1. Another reason we had a shortage of Navy and Air Force in 1941 was a large portion of what we did have was in Europe/Africa.

    The reason for the name Pig Iron Bob was`t particularly helpful either.

  2. [The reason for the name Pig Iron Bob was`t particularly helpful either.]

    And right now we’re building up our military because we’re scared of the potential threat of China yet we have no problem with selling them uranium.

  3. [Sinophile PM sends Beijing a blunt signal, Michelle Grattan – THOSE with long memories will recognise in this white paper a modern, sophisticated version of that old Australian fear — the yellow peril.]

    http://www.theage.com.au/national/sinophile-pm-sends-beijing-a-blunt-signal-20090501-aqad.html?page=-1

    * China’s military capability is on the rise while the USA’s is on the decline and “It acknowledges China’s right “to develop a globally significant military capability” and “The paper paints a far-from-comforting picture of how the power balance around us is likely to change in coming decades. China’s rise and rise will mean the relative decline of American power in the region”.

    * There is the “unknown unknown” about how China will exercise this military capability.

    * The old “pawn” that has bound USA and Japan together, namely Taiwan, is no longer a player because Beijing and Taipeh relationship is at its best for many years. The indication is that it will only get better. “One country, three systems” is not out of the question.

    * Japan is paralysed economically, politically and socially. It is no longer being regarded as the de facto leader in Asia. China has taken that place firmly.

    * China’s model of “Guided Democracy”, which is a copy that has been pioneered by Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, is increasing being viewed as a better model for the Asian countries, in the context of Asian culture and custom. The Thailand, India, and sometimes, Taiwan, model of free wheeling and dealing democracy has led to the best democracy that money can buy.

    * The action is at North and East Asia where China, Japan, India and Russia. In particular if Japan and china can work out their historical baggage, the indications are that they are trying very hard.

    * “But the message is Australians will be living in a different world, where the US umbrella will jostle with the Chinese one (and perhaps others too), with who knows what consequences” – yes, Australia has to look after its own interests independently. China will respect Australia for that independent stance, rather than hostility.

    * I really hate to think how would Australia react if Indonesia is emerging as the next China, economically, politically and militarily, in Southeast Asia, on our doorstep. But that will happen, not if but when.

  4. Diog, Obi is in danger of over exposing himself. he makes the other self confessed media tart, Peter Beattie, looks like a recluse. Did you see the way he gate crashed the press conference held by his own Press Secretary. Not looking good.

    GG, was there not a song called “I like chow mein”

  5. No, Oz, that wasn’t reductio ad Hitlerum – we weren’t attacked by Hitler. It was what actually happened in Australian history. War broke out in our region and we were very unprepared to the meet the threat.

    Tom, that of course is correct. The army was mostly in the Middle East. But it’s not all that difficult to raise an army fairly quickly – all they need is boots and rifles. Building an air force and navy quickly is much more difficut, and much harder now than it was then.

  6. If Australia wants F-22s then it is going the wrong way about getting them.

    The way to try is say F-22s or European instead of the F-35s/JSFs.

  7. [Friday morning a Miss California Pageant official confirmed previous reports that controversial contestant Carrie Prejean received free breast implants, organized and paid for by the pageant, weeks before the Miss USA competition.]

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/01/miss-californias-breast-i_n_194385.html

    This must be very important event to be reported by Huffo. I thought everyone, i mean everyone, male and female, in Kalifornia has breast implants. Look at Arnie.

    It really makes the Chinese military threat looks like a sunday picnic. The Breast Attacks!!!!

  8. 54 – Our resident Obama hater in full flight. Beattie did win elections comfortably and so will Obama, media tart or not. Just one question, what’s so evil about being a media tart?

  9. Frank @ 20
    [Is the ABC becoming as bad as Today Tonight in covering this – The ABC are wishing for a death so it can blame Rudd etc. Tonight’s news had a report from Mexico City and the reporter had a face mask on FFS.]

    Every time I’ve seen the ABC report from Mexico City this week at some point the reporter has dramatically announced that “*everyone* in Mexico City is covering their faces with surgical masks” (or words to that effect), and everytime they’ve said that, there have been several people clearly visible in the background, *not* wearing masks!

  10. I’m not saying this will happen at all but the Spanish Flu, which was also a H1N1 flu, started in much the same way. It petered out over the Northern spring but came back later in the year in a big way.

    I also note that Australia is the only major Western country not to have a confirmed case of swine flu except Italy. Proof that it’s all due to nuclear power stations if you ask me. 😉

  11. GP fantasies about Ming’s military prowess

    So was Menzies. But even he didn’t advocate gutting our defence budget, or not increasing spending to meet credible threats.

    Ming did not too much of a practical nature having been, so far as can be ascertained, the only fit male of military age who held a a militia commission not to have enlisted in the first AIF. Of course like most chicken hawk Tories he didn’t mind other mothers’ sons spilling their bllod on some foreign field.

  12. No 50

    I don’t recall any ideological heart-thumping or xenophobia when there was a SARS-scare. Obviously, you are misguided and deluded.

  13. No 52

    Remember though, a lot of the announcement is a reannouncement of spending – we already knew about the 100 F35 JSFs and the 24 FA/18 Super Hornets.

  14. [Tonight’s news had a report from Mexico City and the reporter had a face mask on FFS.]
    I would be wearing a face mask too if I was in Mexico City.
    [“Every time I’ve seen the ABC report from Mexico City this week at some point the reporter has dramatically announced that “*everyone* in Mexico City is covering their faces with surgical masks” (or words to that effect)]
    This is is untrue Kim Landers, the female reporter on Lateline who had a face mask draped around her neck, explicitly pointed out that NOT EVERYONE was wearing face masks.
    [KIM LANDERS: Felipe Calderon is saying that people should stay indoors because there’s no safer place to protect yourself against this swine flu than inside your own home…
    LEIGH SALES: Will the locals follow his advice, do you think?
    KIM LANDERS: It’s really hard to know, Leigh, because when I look around this morning, _not everybody is even wearing one of these face masks_.]
    http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2557584.htm

    The opposition continues to criticise the defence white paper:
    http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25417877-29277,00.html

    Turnbull is weak on defence.

  15. There is no point in being “scare” of the emerging China’s military might. It is going to happen whether you like it or not, you just have to live and deal with that.

    Consider this. China is the third country to put a man into space on its own, after USA and Russia. It has plan to put a man on the moon by 2020. If it can do that, it will be only the second to do that.

    [BEIJING — A Chinese astronautics professor said Tuesday the country is capable of sending astronauts to moon around 2020.

    “The key technology problem is the ‘returning'”, said Xu Shijie, a professor from Beihang University (previously Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics), explaining that the country’s three-stage moon mission could be defined as “orbiting”, “landing” and “returning”.

    The third stage will last from 2017 to 2020, during which China will launch recoverable moon rovers.

    Many countries, including China, target to sending astronauts to the moon, said Xu, member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), who is in Beijing attending the annual sessions of the political advisory body.]

    http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-03/10/content_7565194.htm

  16. Menzies was 20 in 1914, he was physically fit, and he held a commission in the Melbourne University Rifles. Yet he did not enlist. Why not? Because his brothers were already serving, and his family decided that he should not enlist until he had finished his law degree. Well, that is an excuse of a sort, but he turned 21 in 1915 and did not need his family’s permission to enlist. Many other families saw all their sons enlist. Many men lied about their ages to enlist before they were 18. Menzies was certainly a hypocrite for campaigning for conscription in 1917 when he himself had not volunteered, as many pointed out at the time. Certainly some of Menzies’s contemporaries thought he was a coward. The RSL campaigning against him in his first campaign in East Yarra, which he lost. Earle Page refused to serve under him in 1939, citing his failure to enlist as one of the reasons.

  17. [There is no point in being “scare” of the emerging China’s military might. It is going to happen whether you like it or not, you just have to live and deal with that.]
    Sure, but if China threatens Taiwan or Japan, then we, along with the U.S., will help defend those countries.

    China wouldn’t be stupid enough to ever threaten the U.S.

  18. [Sure, but if China threatens Taiwan or Japan, then we, along with the U.S., will help defend those countries.]

    Again I ask, if we’re actually scared about China being a threat than maybe the first thing we should do is stop selling them things like uranium?

  19. Showy, forget Taiwan. Unless you want to hangon to the coattail of the USA’s looney Right who still yells , occasionally, who lost China. Japan? Remember Changi or the Bridge on the River Kwai.

  20. [China being a threat than maybe the first thing we should do is stop selling them things like uranium?]
    This would only be necessary if they withdraw from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, because that would imply that they are going to use Uranium to build nuclear weapons, instead of running power stations.

  21. [Japan? Remember Changi or the Bridge on the River Kwai.]
    WWII ended in 1945. Times have moved on, Australia and Japan are now strong allies.

  22. I don`t think Australia would go to the defence of Taiwan. We are too close to China. the Australian Government has a bit of a superpower complex. First Britain then America and we are now moving towards China. “I wonder when we will get an Australian Yuan” he says jokingly.

  23. [Australia and Japan are now strong allies.]

    Maybe we should ask the RSL about that. More relevant is who is paying the bills.

  24. China has Nuclear weapons and is allowed them under the NPT.

    It has not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (neither has the US) and has not even signed the partial test ban treaty.

  25. [Maybe we should ask the RSL about that. ]
    It is a FACT Australia and Japan share strong bilateral ties. I couldn’t care less what the RSL’s OPINION is. Japan has reformed itself from a quasi-theocratic imperialist death cult, to a liberal democracy, thus we now share a strong bilateral relationship.

  26. [China has Nuclear weapons and is allowed them under the NPT.]
    Sure, like Russia, U.S., U.K. and France. That’s fine.

    But in the long term, all these states should give up their nuclear weapons, which Russia and the U.S. have slowly been doing over the last decade.

  27. SO

    I’m all for nuclear disarmament but isn’t it a bit naive to think that giving them up will stop them being used. The technology and materials will still be there are they could be assembled in a day or so if the US etc really wanted to.

  28. [This would only be necessary if they withdraw from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, because that would imply that they are going to use Uranium to build nuclear weapons, instead of running power stations.]

    So we’re scared we’re going to go to war with them but we still trust them enough to uphold treaties.

  29. No 87

    The nuclear deterrant is what keeps the world away from an all-encompassing skirmish.

    You don’t need thousands of them, but a few is enough to keep others warned of MAD – mutally assured destruction.

  30. [I’m all for nuclear disarmament but isn’t it a bit naive to think that giving them up will stop them being used. ]
    Fewer nuclear weapons will make the world safer. That’s the bottom line.
    [So we’re scared we’re going to go to war with them but we still trust them enough to uphold treaties.]
    Where did I write that Australia is afraid of going to war with China? We need to be aware that China historically has had extremely dangerous relationships with both Japan and Taiwan, to the extent that the Japanese thing conflict with China is inevitable, and China doesn’t think Taiwan should even exist.
    [You don’t need thousands of them, but a few is enough to keep others warned of MAD – mutally assured destruction.]
    Sure, but the problem we currently have is that the U.S. and Russia do have thousands of them. Fortunately both of those countries realise how absurd that situation is, and are rapidly converting them to nuclear fuel.

  31. Yes, i can really imagine now. The diggers, along side the Flag of the Rising Sun, standing on the beach of Fukuoka, Kyushu. Waiting to repel the Chinese invaders. the last time the Chinese Yuan Dynasty tried it some 800 years ago, the Japanese were wisely enough to know it was futile and pray for the divine wind Kamakaze.

    Of course, Oz was never that smart anyway, just ask Gallipoli.

  32. [Where did I write that Australia is afraid of going to war with China?]

    I didn’t say you were, but it’s the reason given for why we’re building up our defence forces.

  33. Finns @ 74. “The key technology problem is the returning”

    WTF, what technology problem? The Americans went to the moon and back with the type of technology before the innovations of colour TV and the basic calculator. I have it on good authority I tell you that man has yet to land on the moon!

    StilI, I don’t really know what to believe? But I wouldn’t be betting that they did 😉

  34. [The Americans went to the moon and back with the type of technology before the innovations of colour TV and the basic calculator.]

    Centre, gee you were lucky. We used the slide rule.

  35. GP

    [The nuclear deterrant is what keeps the world away from an all-encompassing skirmish.

    You don’t need thousands of them, but a few is enough to keep others warned of MAD – mutally assured destruction.]

    There are quite a few historians who refer to the Cold War as the Long Peace.

  36. [The historic Tree of Knowledge in outback Queensland is standing again and has been unveiled as a memorial at the birthplace of the Labor movement.
    Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett told Saturday’s official launch that the tree symbolised the struggle to improve conditions for workers.]

    http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/workers-memorial-unveiled-in-queensland-20090502-aqoe.html

    [Liberal senator Julian McGauran was less glowing of the memorial, saying it was an “ugly” shrine to the Labor Party]

    Somebody sounds sour and bitter as they realise their party has no heritage, reason for being or soul.

    Surely the libs can think of some memorial, what about a “white feather’ made from pig iron, captures Menzies in one.

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