Morgan: 62-38

The latest fortnightly Roy Morgan face-to-face poll (three days old now, but what the hell), conducted over the previous two weekends, has Labor’s lead increasing still further, from 61-39 to 62-38. Labor’s primary vote is up a point to 51.5 per cent the Coalition’s is down one to 32.5 per cent.

Elsewhere:

• The Liberal preselection vote in Peter Costello’s seat of Higgins went according to script, with his former staffer Kelly O’Dwyer defeating Andrew Abercrombie at the final vote by 222 votes to 112. Reports over the past few days suggest O’Dwyer might be off to Canberra sooner than expected. The Prime Minister appears to be wooing Peter Costello with job offers (executive director of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London being the main tip, according to Phillip Coorey in the Sydney Morning Herald) so as to afflict the Liberals with another troublesome by-election. Costello did not rule out going out early when he made his surprise retirement announcement in June. Glenn Milne reports such a departure might come soon enough for a by-election to be held on the same day as that for Bradfield.

• Alan Tudge, a former staffer to Brendan Nelson and Alexander Downer, has won the Liberal preselection to succeed Chris Pearce in the eastern Melbourne seat of Aston. Andrew Landeryou of VexNews reports Tudge won the final ballot from Neil Angus, having seen off Nick McGowan, Terry Barnes, Deanne Ryall, James Matheson, Sue McMillan, Mike Kapos, Darren Pearce, Ken Aldred and Michael Flynn at earlier counts.

• Julia Irwin has announced she will retire from her safe Labor western Sydney seat of Fowler at the next election, taking the opportunity to launch a spray about the failings of her party’s power structures (her own success in cornering a safe seat for 11 unproductive years being an evident case in point). Irwin believes the Labor margin in the seat has been “built up” by her own personal qualities and hard work, owing little or nothing to its classic low-income, high-immigration Labor profile. Appropriately enough, Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald reports her departure “threatens to create a factional fight” between the Left, which backs Liverpool mayor Wendy Waller, and the Right, which is pushing the unsuccessful 2004 candidate for Greenway, Ed Husic. Laurie Ferguson, left homeless by the redistribution’s abolition of his inner west electorate of Reid, is said to have “little support” from his own Left faction, and “his career is most likely over”.

• Phillip Coorey further reports that factional disputes in Fowler over control of local branches are echoed in the south coast seat of Throsby, whose disappointing member Jennie George is “contemplating whether to run again”.

• Will David Hawker’s departure from Wannon open an entry for the Nationals? The electorate’s history suggests otherwise, but Alex Sinnott of the Warrnambool Standard reports the party is considering running a candidate for the first time since 1984.

• Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald reports a decision by the New South Wales Liberal Party to bring forward federal preselections (so they are conducted on recently published draft redistribution boundaries) is likely to secure the positions of Bronwyn Bishop in Mackellar and Philip Ruddock in Berowra. In further exciting news on the Liberal renewal front, Imre Salusinszky of The Australian reports Alby Schultz and Pat Farmer will again seek preselection in their respective seats of Hume and Macarthur. Farmer launched a spray at his constituents on the night of the 2007 federal election for failing to give him the margin he felt he deserved, and has since moved to the expensive north shore suburb of Mosman. Macarthur has been made a notionally marginal Labor seat under the draft redistribution.

• Imre Salusinszky also reports that police sergeant Darren Jameson is favoured to win Liberal preselection in Belinda Neal’s seat of Robertson, notwithstanding that former Liberal member Jim Lloyd is considering a comeback.

• The Liberal National Party’s feeble legal challenge to Queensland Labor’s win in Chatsworth at the March state election died its inevitable death when the Queensland Supreme Court brought down its ruling on Thursday. A smaller than average 14 errors were identified into the count, the effect of which when rectified was to increase Labor’s margin from 74 votes to 85. There were a grand total of two cases of double voting, both involving confused elderly citizens. Antony Green offers some commentary on the judgement, which stands as a heartening confirmation of the integrity of Australia’s electoral processes.

• With New South Wales state Labor member Phil Koperberg indicating he is bitterly disappointed with politics and might not go the distance, Antony Green weighs in with an overview of his electorate of Blue Mountains. It notes that Kerry Bartlett, who lost the corresponding federal seat of Macquarie to Koperberg’s predecessor Bob Debus in 2007, has been mentioned as a potential Liberal candidate.

• Alex Sinnott of the Warrnambool Standard reports that Liberal preselection candidates for the Victorian state upper house region of Western Victoria include incumbent David Koch, former police sergeant, anti-corruption campaigner and Wannon aspirant Simon Illingworth, former Victorian Farmers Federation president Simon Ramsay, Colac businessman Richard Riordan and Daylesford real estate agent Paul Johnson. Another incumbent, John Vogels, is retiring. The coalition agreement gives the Liberals the top two positions on a joint ticket, with the Nationals taking the third.

• Anna Caldwell of the Courier-Mail reports a private members’ bill sponsored by independent Nicklin MP Peter Wellington to introduce fixed three-year terms has been voted down by both government and opposition. The former wants the matter determined by referendum – Deputy Premier Paul Lucas further says a four-year term would be “more appropriate” as it would “enable necessary planning and implementation time for governments”, which (given the state of play south of the border) makes one doubt the government’s seriousness about seeing reform.

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.

395 comments on “Morgan: 62-38”

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  1. I wonder what the US life exp. would be if “resident aliens” were included in the stats? What would they be if the 20 million + “illegal immigrants”, the slaves who keep the economy ticking, were included?

  2. [According to this link the UN says that the US has the 38th highest life expectency, right after the Republic of Cuba, which comes in at 37. Explain that GP!]
    I’ve already explained it to G.P., he now understands that in the U.S. they ration health care based on ability to pay (i.e. wealth).

  5. A factor GP has not explained is that the vast majority of health insurance in the US is paid by employers.

    I would assume he would oppose a system where a small business has to pay $120,000 a month to insure its employees and their families?

  6. [A factor GP has not explained is that the vast majority of health insurance in the US is paid by employers.

    I would assume he would oppose a system where a small business has to pay $120,000 a month to insure its employees and their families?]

    Can you imagine the outcry if this happened in Australia and by the ALP ? 🙂

  7. There was a research published few days ago that said something like 45,000 people died each year in the USA because of either no or inadequate health insurance.

    So much for the greatest country in the world.

  8. The US health system fails any free market test. There is no effective competition between providers. The whole thing is a series of interlocking cartels – doctors, drug companies, health insurers – who all support each other’s corrupt practices and all buy political protection by donating massive amounts of money to Congress members. They’d all be in jail under Australian law. Obama’s bill barely scratches the surface of this horrible morass of corruption and yet look at the furore it has whipped up.

    *bye for now*

  10. GP, Howard and Costello “were” well aware that they were putting the Budget into “Structural Deficit”. They just chose to ignore that”fact” to keep getting elected. Treasury clearly warned them about this “fact” but they chose to ignore it and certainly didn’t advise the electors or Labor about that “fact”!

    “The structural budget balance deteriorated from 2002-03, moving into structural deficit in 2006-07,” Treasury said in budget paper No1 on Tuesday night.”

    [Coalition faces a ruinous record]
    [The charter of budget honesty was meant to take the guesswork out of fiscal policy for voters because it gave Treasury the opportunity to update the numbers in the middle of the campaign.

    We were told there would be surpluses into the next decade. In fact, the budget was shot at the time of the election because too much of the revenue windfall from the resources boom had been handed back as tax cuts and increased spending.

    “The structural budget balance deteriorated from 2002-03, moving into structural deficit in 2006-07,” Treasury said in budget paper No1 on Tuesday night.

    The Coalition will resist this reading of recent history. It will want to argue that a larger surplus on paper in the good times would have been untenable because the electorate wanted its money back.

    It should give up now. Peter Costello left a trail of clues in the extensive interviews he gave to authors before and after the election that John Howard’s mania for spending was damaging the integrity of the budget. ]
    [The more the Coalition pretends that it left the budget battle-ready for the global recession, the more it plays into Labor’s hands. Every new government craves the narrative of the black hole, and Wayne Swan has a credible story to tell on the structure of the budget – up to a point.

    The Treasurer is correct when he says the dramatic plunge into deficit wasn’t his doing. It remains primarily the fault of the global recession and the former government.

    This can be seen with a simple calculation. Let’s assume Labor didn’t spend a dollar since the world economy turned turtle. That is, it did what the Opposition seems to have been demanding, by keeping fiscal policy tighter in recession than it had been under the Coalition in the boom.

    Take out the stimulus, in fact all new spending since last May’s budget, and you get a run of whopping deficits that linger well after the economy is supposed to be growing again. This is where common sense must kick in for the Coalition and the structural deficit moves from the realms of theory to a statement of the obvious. ]
    http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25489387-7583,00.html

  11. “”Most of the big drug companies are American””

    Er no they are European. ”

    Ruawake – 12 of the top 20 largest drug companies in the world are American.

    The funny thing is about the whole mess in America, is that even the most “radical” and “socialist” option of a public insurance option isn’t even “radical” or “socialist” by Canadian, European or Australian standards. Americans only have to look across the border to their north to find a radical socialist system – one, incidently, that works far better than the American system.

  12. [Ruawake – 12 of the top 20 largest drug companies in the world are American.]

    Don’t confuse drug companies with drug marketing companies.

    Canada does not have a “health system” it has differing systems in each province. People in Canada move provinces to get appropriate care, according to their need. 🙁

  13. [People in Canada move provinces to get appropriate care, according to their need.]
    You could do that here. Leave NSW if you need an orthopaedic surgeon, but go back if you need cardiac care.

  18. Thank you PollBludger for not having made my day.
    Blo-dy Peter Costello,- WTF doesn’t PM Rudd butt out on giving all the effing Libs plum jobs?-, becomes the executive director of The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London.
    I wonder how many big companies will crash while waiting to see whether their beloved executive director trying to make up his mind.
    NB: President Sarkozy: Please don’t get alarmed when a gangling Australian ex-politician threatens to make a play for your job. He never follows through.

  20. Here is a link to a very informative and lengthy article about health care in Australia.
    http://inside.org.au/going-dutch-lets-talk-about-it-at-least/
    Going Dutch? Let’s talk about it, at least
    The Medicare Select proposal has opened up a new front in the health debate. Melissa Sweet talks to supporters and sceptics
    [Even if you find health policy debates mind-numbingly dull – as news editors have been complaining in the United States, where even the Obama factor is not enough to stop audiences switching off – there will come a time when they are suddenly, awfully relevant.

    And so it is worth at least trying to have a conversation about healthcare policy that moves beyond the usual predictable claims and counter-claims, because it has become abundantly clear that things cannot continue as they are, at least not if we want affordable, accessible, quality care. Another reason for having this conversation, apart from matters of naked self-interest, is that what we want from our health system says much about what we value as a society. Do we really value a fair go for all?

    For all its flaws, the final report of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission offers an opportunity for this conversation. And one of its most controversial suggestions, that we move to “a next generation of Medicare,” involving managed competition between health funds, merits careful examination.]

  21. [Do you support or oppose means testing the heath insurance rebate for people on higher incomes?

    Total support 55%
    Total oppose 28%]

    Looks like the rabble and the greens backed another “winner’.

  22. 221

    The Greens favour its complete scrapping. They voted against it because the government insisted on having the raise in the surcharge in the same bill. The Greens oppose the surcharge.

  24. [221

    The Greens favour its complete scrapping. They voted against it because the government insisted on having the raise in the surcharge in the same bill. The Greens oppose the surcharge.]

    Another “All or Nothing” approach from St Bob’s Bolshies – and they wonder why they are criticised here.

  26. Kenneth Davidson explains why the Greens rejected the increase in the Medicare levy surcharge
    http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/the-poor-have-to-pay-so-the-rich-can-stay-healthy-20090913-fm4q.html
    The poor have to pay, so the rich can stay healthy
    [As part of the package, the Medicare levy surcharge on high-income earners – if they decided not to take private health insurance – was to be increased from 1 per cent to 1.5 per cent. In effect, the rich were being given an incentive to pay their premiums by a cut in their income tax, which in most cases would be higher than the cost of the insurance premiums. This is why the Greens joined the Opposition to oppose the legislation.

    The Government is nowhere near defining the health care crisis because its solution will require either clawing money out of private health insurance or higher taxes.
    Government health policy shows signs of being run in the interests of the health funds. Medibank Private has been converted into a public company to facilitate privatisation down the track.]

  27. I think it’s a bit rich for the Laborista to complain about the Greens voting down the health insurance rebate change when it was official Labor policy at the last election not to change the rebate!

  28. Pegasus,

    I’m delighted that, once again, as always, in a never fail formula, the Greens have put themselves on the wrong side of public opinion.

  29. My understanding – I may be wrong, is that the Greens voted against a $1.9 billion saving in Govt. expenditure because people who pay the surplus on conscientious grounds would have to pay more?

  30. Wasn’t it possible to split the bills?
    http://greensmps.org.au/content/media-release/private-health-money-needs-go-public-health-services
    [The Australian Greens today said that they would support the Government’s measures to means-test the Private Health Insurance rebate as it was a step towards implementing Greens policy on the rebate. However, the Greens outlined that they won’t be supporting the Medicare Levy Surcharge increases.

    “We will move to split these Bills, so that the Senate can vote on each Bill.”]

  31. Today’s PM mentioned a story that Labor strategists are looking more favourably at a DD election on the ETS as giving Labor a better Senate outcome than a Senate half election at end of 2010.

    Any thoughts on this?

  32. I think it’s a bit rich for the Laborista to complain about the Greens voting down the health insurance rebate change when it was official Labor policy at the last election not to change the rebate!
    Diogenes.

    -Shoosh now,we dont want the laberals to face an inconvenient truth.or two.

  33. […when it was official Labor policy at the last election not to change the rebate!]

    It was a lower core, pre GFC thingy, pledge. 😛

  35. Diogs,

    The GFC (remember the GFC) has forced the Government to make difficult decisions that as you say are contrary to the policy taken to the last election.

    If you feel strongly about this matter, you have a right to vote against the Government at the next election.

  36. [And yet the Green vote doesn’t go down. Next please.]

    Wow, a whole 8% 🙂 it’s nearly as high as the ratings figures for 6PR in Perth 🙂

  39. Four Corners tonight is about the homeless.
    http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2009/s2689938.htm
    “The Last Chance Motel” goes to air at 8.30pm on 21st September on ABC1. It is repeated at 11.35pm on 22nd September.
    [What do you do when you’ve lost your job, lost your home and you have three kids to feed? You end up in a motel cooking, eating and sleeping in one room at the taxpayer’s expense. These are Australia’s new homeless.

    In a gritty and at times confronting documentary, reporter Sarah Ferguson goes inside the lives of these people. They once had jobs and homes, now hit by the triple whammy of the global financial crisis, a rental market that’s almost non-existent and government neglect of public housing, their situation is bleak.

    When Kevin Rudd became Prime Minister he said housing the homeless was one of his major objectives. In most peoples’ minds the homeless he referred to were single people, some mentally disturbed, some drug affected, many sleeping rough. But that is only one section of the homeless in Australia today. Across the nation’s major cities there is now a large number of families with limited resources that simply can’t find a home they can afford to rent.]

  40. Wow, a whole 8% it’s nearly as high as the ratings figures for 6PR in Perth

    -or the percentage of promises delivered under the rudd government.

  41. It is, of course, perfectly possible that the Greens’ vote could decline at the next election; yet still leave them holding the entire Senate BoP afterwards.

    This would seem to be their plan- remain “uncontaminated” by major party politics, while sliding into a position of real power.

  42. [Wow, a whole 8% it’s nearly as high as the ratings figures for 6PR in Perth

    -or the percentage of promises delivered under the rudd government.]

    Or the proportion of Greens who can mount a rational argument.

  43. [Across the nation’s major cities there is now a large number of families with limited resources that simply can’t find a home they can afford to rent.]

    Due to Howard’s failure to fund the Commonwealth-State housing agreements. Did he have a Minister for Housing?

    Remember him bragging about not hearing complaints from people who’s house prices had sky-rocketed?

  44. At this link you can hear John Falzon, Chief executive of St Vincent De Paul, being interviewed about poverty, unemployment and income support.
    http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2009/2691448.htm
    [More than 3 million people on income support will start receiving the higher pensions announced in the May budget over the next fortnight, and single pensioners will receive up to an extra $35 week.

    But the increase in pensions has widened the gap between the pension and the unemployment benefit, known as the NewStart Allowance. A single pensioner will receive $335 a week under the payment boost, but a single unemployed person will remain stuck on $228 a week which works out at just over $32 a day.

    The OECD’s latest unemployment report says Australian job seekers experience greater poverty than the unemployed in other developed countries.]

  45. GG

    [The GFC (remember the GFC) has forced the Government to make difficult decisions that as you say are contrary to the policy taken to the last election.]

    Well, then they should have made difficult decisions about cutting things that weren’t election promises. That wouldn’t have been to hard.

  46. [Wow, a whole 8%]

    Averaging 10% in Newspoll. Either way, it’s enough to give the Greens the full balance of power after the next election, which means you’ll have to gain support from the right, the coalition, or the left, the Greens.

    ENJOY! 😀

  47. Wow, a whole 8% it’s nearly as high as the ratings figures for 6PR in Perth

    -or the percentage of promises delivered under the rudd government.

    Or the proportion of Greens who can mount a rational argument.

    – or the propotion of laberals that can understand a rational argument.

  49. Diog

    Labor health policy.

    33.To this end, Labor will:
    •Make all efforts to support both public and private health sectors.
    •Ensure that public and private health services complement each other.
    •Ensure that all necessary services are provided in the public health system.
    •Work to improve both systems by encouraging competition, innovation and new uses of both public and private health providers.
    •Retain Medibank Private in public ownership.
    •Apply high standards to the provision of both public and private health services.
    •Regulate the private health industry to ensure that value-for-money products are available to all policy holders.
    •Work to eliminate surprise gap payments for private health insurance holders.
    •Work to increase the affordability of private health insurance for all Australians.
    •Ensure that patient choice and clinical decision making remain at the heart of health care.
    •Ensure that every Australian has access to high quality mental health care and dental care, through the public and private sectors.

    Wot broken promise??????????

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