I won’t be available to take part in this evening’s fortnightly Newspoll festivities (nor this afternoon’s Essential Research, which Possum tends to be timelier with in any case), but here’s a thread on which you can keep each other informed of the news as it breaks, as well as doing the other things you usually do.
Opening the batting. expect surprises in this week Newspoll and National Acct No.
There will always be more surprises under Labor.
Surprise No: 1
[Super funds grab share bargains – AUSTRALIA’S listed companies have raised a record $70 billion in the past year and $15 billion in the past month alone, increasing their chances of survival as expectations rise that the economy will be officially declared in recession this week.
The main beneficiaries of the biggest share sale in history are super funds, which have been buying up huge amounts of shares at big discounts to try to claw back some of the $200 billion in retiree savings they lost in their worst performance in more than 20 years.
ABN Amro Morgans stockbroker Simon Bond described the recent bout of equity raisings as a phenomenon.
“I’ll be telling my grandkids about this,” Mr Bond said. It really is an extraordinary period in time, and for those taking advantage of the big discounts and buying new shares, they are doing well. “Existing shareholders who don’t will end up with their shareholdings diluted if they don’t take part in the equity raisings.”
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25566560-601,00.html
Just toying with the State Greens polling with Federal Greens question (and know this will cue the usual hysteria, but what the heck, it’s interesting…)
To me, this reinforces the idea that most Green voters are protest voters, who only have the haziest idea of Greens policy.
As a Victorian, I can name about three Vic Greens – Barber, in the Upper House, because he’s had so much negative publicity and the two Fed Senate candidates, but only because I was running a Fed campaign.
Now, as should be obvious from past bloggings, I’m active politically so you think that I could do better than that, which suggests the Greens profile is fairly low. (I can certainly name more Vic Nats than three and know a lot about each of the individuals I could name).
On the other hand, I can name all the Greens Federal senators, have heard all of them speak in Parliament and could recognise most of them if I saw them in the street.
Which suggests to me that the State Greens are polling well because nobody really knows anything about them but wants an alternative to vote for. However, when they do know something about them, they’re less likely to vote for them.
Further from the Galaxy poll, 81% of people either don’t care if Labor was to call an early election or it will make them more likely to vote them.
[Pollster David Briggs said the result would be a concern for the Opposition. “The only traits that Malcolm Turnbull leads the Prime Minister are in the perception he is arrogant and out of touch with ordinary Australians,” he said.]
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,25567152-5006301,00.html
[
Hawker announces plans to retire
Posted on June 1, 2009, 8:08am
Long-serving Liberal MP for Wannon, David Hawker, has announced he will not contest the Western Victorian seat at the next election.
Mr Hawker, who has been Wannon’s Member of Parliament for the past 26 years, said he felt it was time to
“pass the baton”.
He said it had been a real honour to have been able to serve the people of Wannon.
He was chosen as Speaker of the House of Representatives in 2004 and served until February, 2008.
“It was an absolute privilege to be the 25th person since Federation to be elected Speaker,” Mr Hawker said.
Mr Hawker won the seat of Wannon at a by-election in 1983 when former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser
retired. He was convincingly re-elected in nine subsequent elections.
Mr Hawker is currently the third longest-serving MP in the Federal Parliament.
“The Liberal Party is expected to open the nomination process for Wannon shortly and it is important that
there is time to encourage potential candidates to have time to put forward their names for preselection,” he
said.
Mr Hawker added that not only did he expect a first class field to contest the preselection, but also that he had every confidence a worthy candidate would be chosen.
The Nationals may also contest the electorate under the terms of the Coalition agreement.
]
Re 6, would think that the obvious next in line for going is Ruddock. I think at least one PB’r lives in Ruddocks electorate but don’t know if they are a regular poster. Has anyone heard any rumors?
Juliem: you must be thinking of me LOL
Yes, I live in “Ruddock Land”.
He’s apparently contesting the next election, to keep the seat from being snatched by a member of the religious right.
Funnily enough, Labor actually won one or two booths in Berowa in 2007, it’s not a completely blue ribbon Liberal electorate.
JULIEM @ 6
I can’t wait for the Wannon contest at the next federal election this seat is a natural National Party seat and the Liberals should be concentrating their resources on Melbournes metropolitan seats against Labor. The state seats that lie within Wannon are basically National so the federal seat should be too. The graziers in this area have placed a bit each way for far too long. A victory for the Nationals in Wannon would square the ledger against the Liberals who stole both Indi and Murray.
evan14, his logic seems to assume that the electorate will be less likely to fall to the religious right in another 3 years time 😀 …… think he’s got it all wrong, the more time passes, the more likely it is 😉
[this seat is a natural National Party seat ]
Then why have they never won it? The last time they contested it, in 1983, they polled 22%. That was the first time they had contested it since 1949, when they polled 15%.
[The state seats that lie within Wannon are basically National]
Lowan is a Nat seat, and they won Warrnambool in the early 80s, but the coastal areas generally have never been Nat territory.
[The graziers in this area have placed a bit each way for far too long.]
Graziers generally have never been a core Nat constituency. The Nat base was always small farmers, wheat and dairy in particular, which is why Wimmera/Mallee, Murray and Gippsland have always been the Nats’ best Victorian seats. They’ve never won Wannon and haven’t won Corangamite since 1931.
[A victory for the Nationals in Wannon would square the ledger against the Liberals who stole both Indi and Murray.]
They “stole” them by winning more votes than the Nats, which is very wicked of them. The Nats are in longterm decline in Vic, and if they contest Wannon they won’t get 20% of the vote.
Further to Adam’s point about Wannon, the state seat of Warrnambool was won by the National Party as recent as late 1990s but this area is not National Party for example the seat of South West Coast formally Portland is held by Dr Denis Naphine for the Liberals, the only way the Nationals could win is if the Liberals did not run
The Nationals in Victoria won two extra seats at the state level and came close to winning three. I don’t believe their in Longterm decline in Victoria they have just been unlucky with such things as trouble preselection contests particular at the federal level. At the 1983 Wannon By-election there was such a weil of sympathy for Malcolm Fraser that his support for Hawker effected the Nationals vote and the 1949 result was probably due in part to the unpopularity of the Country-National premier of Victoria at that time was McDonald the Country Party Premier of Victoria in 1949 or was it 1952 I”ve forgotten. But they have always been a strong force in Victoria.
The Nats are in decline but rcently they have performed well at State level which goes to show how poorly the Liberals are travelling.
Its really a very exciting time for the Victorian Nationals at the federal not only will they get a new Senator in Bridget Mackenzie but the opportunity to contest Wannon, corangamite no sitting Liberal and McEwen no sitting Liberal. The Melbourne socialite and former Melbourne Monarchist solicitor Sophie Mirabella may yet decide that Warangatta no longer appeals and pro-abortionist Murray MP Sharman stone may also decide to set up stumps.
The Nats regained Mildura – a seat they should never have lost – from the independent, and they gained Morwell (with 28% of the primary vote) because Labor is on the nose in the La Trobe Valley. At the same election they lost two of their four upper house seats because of the changed electoral system. They again failed to win East Gippsland, once their safest seat.
Federally, the Nats lost Indi in 1977 and Murray in 1996. They came very close to losing Mallee in 1993, the last time there was a three-cornered contest. The only really safe Nat seat in Vic is Gippsland. You can blame candidates if you want, but there was a time when the CP would have won Murray with the proverbial drover’s dog.
[At the 1983 Wannon By-election there was such a weil of sympathy for Malcolm Fraser that his support for Hawker effected the Nationals vote ]
I’ve seen some imaginative excuses for a bad election result, but that’s one of the best. Wannon has never been Nat territory, full stop.
[The Melbourne socialite and former Melbourne Monarchist solicitor Sophie Mirabella may yet decide that Warangatta no longer appeals and pro-abortionist Murray MP Sharman stone may also decide to set up stumps.]
Have you been drinking the sheep dip again, Paul? The only possible retirement from a rural seat (apart from Hawker) is John Forrest, and if he retires you’ll have an uphill battle retaining Mallee. You’d be wasting your money in Wannon, Corangamite or McEwen.
LOL! Chrissy Pyne just said on ABC Adelaide that, if in power, the Liberals would cut taxes to increase revenue.
[LOL! Chrissy Pyne just said on ABC Adelaide that, if in power, the Liberals would cut taxes to increase revenue.]
What a bunch of morons
The RBA may cut interest rates because inflation is so low:
[ THE annual rate of inflation has eased to a seven-year low as the slowdown in the economy continues to keep a lid on price rises, a private sector survey shows.
The TD/Securities/Melbourne Institute inflation gauge fell 0.3 per cent in May, following no change in April and a 0.1 per cent decline in March.
Over the year to May, the inflation gauge rose by 1.5 per cent – marking its lowest annual rate since the inception of the gauge in mid-2002. It has also fallen through the lower end of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) two to three per cent target band for inflation.]
http://www.news.com.au/business/story/0,27753,25567724-31037,00.html
Speaking of Liberal retirements, has Bronwyn Bishop announced whether she’s standing for re-election in Mackellar?
I would have thought she would have been a certainty to go this time around. Same with Pat Farmer in Macarthur and Dana Vale in Hughes…
Bronnie hasn’t announced anything. Pat Farmer is probably going, he doesn’t even live in his electorate anymore.
Remember, Bronnie’s dream is to be Speaker, hence all her frivolous points of order.
I haven’t been drinking sheeps dip yet but with you a and b mob i’ll be driven too it. The Nationals vote in Wannon was a reasonable 22 per cent in 1983 no if at a federal election not a by-election this time if they can reach 27 percent and labor runs third with say 25 percent and gives the nats their preferences like in Mallee in 1993 the Liberals can be beaten. Never write off our Country to National its a political force that keeps surviving against tremendous odds.
It’s forgotten these days, but up until the 1950s, it was not unknown for Labor and the Country Party to do deals in the western districts to defeat the Liberals. That ended after the mid-1950s but was revived in in 1970. From memory, the Country Parrty lost four seats as the Liberals hammered them for having done deals with what was then a had-left Labor Party.
As the Country/National Party was not part of a Victorian Coalition until 1991, the Labor Party was still trying to coax the Country/National Party into preference deals in the 1980s. When Ian Smith resigned from Warrnambool in 1983 to contest Wannon pre-selection, the Liberals won Warrnambool when Labor decided to punish the Nationals for not doing a preference deal. Labor finished third and elected the Liberal.
At the 1985 election, Labor reversed its preference deal to de-stabilise the Liberals. Labor finished third and elected the National candidate who held the seat for more than decade. This was despite the Liberal vote rising and the Labor and National vote falling. Such are the games that can be played with compulsory preferential voting.
At the 1988 Victorian election, Labor preferenced against the sitting MP in every seat, whether Liberal or National, deliberately to destabilise relations between the Liberal and National Parties. Labor preferences defeated the sitting National MP for Mildura and elected Liberal Craig Bildstein at the 1988 election, the first time the Liberals had ever won the seat.
I’d expect Labor to preference any National candidate in Wannon ahead of the Liberal, but the national won’t win unless they can outpoll the Labor candidate, and on past voting trends in that district, that seems unlikely.
Paul Nash, Labor gave their preferences to the Liberal Party in Mallee in 1993, not the Nationals. It was only the leakage of Labor preferences that elected John Forrest.
My comment at 24 was entirely about Victorian state politics by the way.
[Never write off our Country to National its a political force that keeps surviving against tremendous odds.]
Mr Nash, see if you can find a trend in these figures that show the number of seats held by the National party:
1996 18
1998 16
2001 13
2004 12
2007 10
2008* 9 (After the Lyne by-election)
Thanks Oz -5. I really needed to read that piece in The Advertiser. Most of my true blue Lib friends will have been choking on their Weeties to read that.
Have just watched ‘the Doors’ on A-pac lining up to say what a nasty streak Kev has and how their electorates are telling them they are frightened of the debt, etc. etc.
What a laughable exercise that is – all line up to spout their little piece before they go into work. Pity Labor feels the need to do it too.
[Never write off our Country to National its a political force that keeps surviving against tremendous odds.
Mr Nash, see if you can find a trend in these figures that show the number of seats held by the National party: ]
Pick me! Pick me!
The trend is that the party has rid itself of the pinko elements hiding under the bed
and will resume its stellar growth toward double digit representation
🙂
28. That shld have been’watched the Libs at ‘the Doors’.
Juliem – I made a hash of my tips this weekend.
In 1970 Labor won Portland, Dundas and Kara Kara thanks to Country Party preferences. Henry Bolte called them “political prostitutes, ready to get into bed with anyone who pays them.” In 1973 they reversed their preferences and Labor lost Portland and Dundas, but the great Es Curnow retained Kara Kara without CP preferences.
Antony Greens comments at 24 are interesting and it makes me remember the lonely figure of the late Sir Henry Bolte who worked tirelessly to build up the Liberal vote in rural and regional Victoria. The lonely figure that I remember was the one who came up to Queensland to support the Nationals in that watershed state election of 1983 I think with Hamer and later thompsons travails he must have thought he joined the wrong party.
As for showson array of figures I can only say i remember the 1984 figures with more promise of 21 to the Liberals 44 which led to the 1987 push but intransigence from within helped kill it off and the say the rest is history.
[I’d expect Labor to preference any National candidate in Wannon ahead of the Liberal, but the national won’t win unless they can outpoll the Labor candidate, and on past voting trends in that district, that seems unlikely.]
I wonder if Labor would deliberately run dead in Wannon (like they do in Dubbo and Tamworth in NSW State elections) to ensure the Nats end up ahead of them on primaries.
After all, that was exactly what they tried to do (unsuccessfully) in O’Connor in 2007 in an attempt to defeat Tuckey.
Anyone listening to the house?
Wilson Tuckey makes less sense than William McInness on an episode of Q&A.
And further on Mallee Paul Nash, I’ve checked my notes. I remember it because it was the first Federal election where the AEC counted preferences on election night and they had nominated a Labor-National finish in Mallee. If Labor finished third, I programmed the ABC system to do a preference estimate instead. Knowing Labor’s how to vote, I factored in 80% Labor preferences to Liberal and on election night had the Liberal winning. In the end, Labor preferences only flowed 60% to Liberal, and the Nationals just won, 50.5% to Liberal 49.5%.
I was hoping you’d remember the 1970 Victorian election Psephos.
Of course, if the Nationals run in Mallee, the Liberals might threaten to run in Richmond and Lyne
Apologies, I meant Wannon, not Mallee.
The Libs running in Lyne would be a threat as empty as the Nats running Grayndler.
The Liberals would be better off fighting Labor in Metropolitan seats then threatening the Nationals if the non-Labor side has got any chance of regaining government.
[The Liberals would be better off fighting Labor in Metropolitan seats then threatening the Nationals if the non-Labor side has got any chance of regaining government.]
Don’t the Liberals have more rural and regional seats than the Nats?
I note with interest that the Liberal Party submission calls for the abolition of another rural seat whilst the Nationals submission recommends the seat of Banks be abolished in metropolitan Sydney. The last redistribution already cost the coalition the rural seat of Gwydir I just don’t know whats to become of the non-Labor side.
Antony, do you know the deadline when they will announce what the new redistricting will be? (i.e is there a “date” to “look forward” to? :grin:)
Yes shows on thats the problem with the non-labor side the Liberals have been too busy winning safe non-labor seats of the Nationals then winning Metropolitan seats of the ALP. The old coalition way of ruling Liberals in the Metropolitan and Nationals everywhere else is breaking down and Labor is laughing all the way to the ballot box.
Wallace on sky giving a press conference announcing his retirement
[The old coalition way of ruling Liberals in the Metropolitan and Nationals everywhere else is breaking down and Labor is laughing all the way to the ballot box.]
Oh no way, that’s TERRIBLE!
True possum, but the key point would be to outpoll the Nationals and establish a case for the future. The Nationals were shocked in 1993 when the Liberals ran a candidate in Richmond and nearly outpolled the Nationals. They have fought tooth and nail to keep Liberals out of NSW North Coast seats ever since. There have been several huge rows in the Liberal Party about running in Port Macquarie, and they have required the state Liberal Leader to impose their authority to stop it happening. Just this weekend, Barry O’Farrell had to do the same thing to stop the Liberal Party running against the Nationals in Monaro at the next state election.
Vera, I’ve been suspecting this since Friday last week, so a few days now. Wouldn’t have expected to get this news off of PB though :grin :
We were at Burswood casino here in Perth most of the day on Friday. I wanted to put down some money on last weekend’s AFL games and noticed that already on FRIDAY morning, TAB had CLOSED the betting, all betting and all available options, on “Sheedy coaching Richmond” before seasons end …..
GOOD on you for being the first to report this one in 😉 {I’ve become a Mafia Wars addict on FaceBook so don’t check all of the sports sites as often as I used to}
Juliem draft boundaries in QLD late July, NSW early August. The gazettal and tabling of the final boundaries is scheduled for December/January.
48, so that means (cutting through the terminology) we get the new seats (whether new or old disappearing) about the first of next year? Q2 – what allowance is made for the seats to be “used” if a DD is called prior to that point? (chances slim I know)
I doubt that the Nats will ever hold Richmond again. The Libs would give them a shot in Page and Cowper too.