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.
Ruawake,
Contrary to what you might think I am not blaming Rudd for the current crisis but I do have some concerns. A while ago I posted this link to an article “No Votes In The Homeless”
http://newmatilda.com/2009/09/04/no-votes-homeless
[In contrast, if we are to believe the report, the cost of building new social housing was lower than expected, allowing the Government to slash 800 homes from its target of 20,000, and in the process save $750 million.
Welfare groups were understandably dismayed. The chief executive of Hanover Welfare Services, Tony Keenan, told The Age that “you would have to think that providing housing for homeless families would be a higher priority than providing a new school hall or science lab for a school that already has one”.
It’s a fair point. The social housing provisions of the stimulus package were always one of the strongest aspects of the policy — as I wrote at the time it was announced. Australian federal governments have historically been reluctant to invest in public and social housing while giving huge tax breaks to home-owners and investors in areas like capital gains tax and negative gearing. The stimulus package offered an opportunity to redress that.
And if the costs of the program were indeed lower than originally forecast, here was an opportunity to build more social housing than originally planned. Instead, the nation’s poorest will get fewer houses.]
[That doesn’t make it a good decision.]
Why not? Nobody is going to leave private insurance, the Govt. saves squillions. Why is it a bad decision?
Diogs,
I’ve conceded it is a broken promise. The Government has articulated why they are doing what they are doing and what the consequences will be.
Good or bad is a judgement call. You make your mind up. However, if you cheer on the Greens and the Libs, be prepared to own the consequences such as “upward pressure on interest rates” that will ensure “we are not out of the woods yet”.
Seeking bludger’s guidance!!
Michael Johnson (Lib, Ryan) has invited me to a “Special, one day, Green Technology Symposium” (glossy invite, pictures of smiley sun etc – lots of pictures of Michael).
The Keynote speakers are:
Wilson Tuckey
Bob Katter
That bloke from the Unions who is red hot on nuclear energy.
Some bloke with a helicopter that runs on biodiesel.
Some bloke from Qantas whose job it is to investigate the safety of jet fuel.
Of course, I understand the main purpose of the ‘event’ is just to allow Johnson to big-note himself and create some greenwash photo-ops, but perhaps some of our Green Bludgers could tell me whether Wilson and Bob have anything worthwhile to say about climate change, alternative fuels and renewable energy? I mean, you guys are in bed with the LNP, voting down the CPRS and generally siding with the dinosaurs on climate change. Right?
Should I go along? Will my knowledge base be enhanced? 🙂
No 254
If you don’t believe in practical solutions, stay away.
Trubbell,
If alcohol is involved get a table organised and organise your own game of bulldust bingo using key phrases that are likely to come up.
Sell cards at the event. Become a millionaire.
How could any conservative hog the limelight at an event that also included Tuckey and Katter as speakers?
I don’t think you can necessarily blame the Howard government for any failure of housing policy – housing policy has been either non existent or maladjusted for years. And it continues under Rudd – first home buyers grants just skew the market further and drive prices up – first home buyers might have been better off if the market had taken its course and prices had naturally fallen. How many of these people who have hocked themselves to the eyeballs with the grant are going to squeal when interset rates rise.
High levels of immigration also drive up demand and prices, and we live in a very centralised country. Getting rid of negative gearing and putting capital gains on the family home might help. Not sure how you keep up private rental supply without neg gearing – I got caught in the 80s rent squeeze when it went out before – Nasty! CGT might lessen speculation.
The Ruddster should have a root and branch look at housing policy – tax, the lot.
ruawake
If it’s a good decision, why did they go into the 2007 election with a promise not to change the private hospital rebate scheme?
Trubbell
Don’t worry if Labor gets 54% of the TPP vote in Qld Johnson may find himself asking Katter for a job growing sugar cane.
I mean, you guys are in bed with the LNP, voting down the CPRS and generally siding with the dinosaurs on climate change. Right?
-?
I think you will find that the greens have always led the debate on climate change.
Should I go along? Will my knowledge base be enhanced?
-If desirious of seeing two sides of the same coin,by all means attend .
As regards the content ,who knows what the laberal/libor club will say,aside from greens=BOO.
[High levels of immigration also drive up demand and prices, and we live in a very centralised country. Getting rid of negative gearing and putting capital gains on the family home might help. Not sure how you keep up private rental supply without neg gearing – I got caught in the 80s rent squeeze when it went out before – Nasty! CGT might lessen speculation.
The Ruddster should have a root and branch look at housing policy – tax, the lot.]
Nice in theory, but in practice it would be political suicide – especially with everyone wanting “the great Australian Dream”.
[If it’s a good decision, why did they go into the 2007 election with a promise not to change the private hospital rebate scheme?]
Situations change.
Why is it a bad decision? Just because labor negated it as an election issue?
GG
If you use that logic, we/I could never oppose anything Labor did because it would be to the Liberals benefit (which would almost automatically mean it’s overall a bad thing).
But that’s a false inference to make because Labor would end up as bad as the Libs if they could do whatever they wanted without anyone complaining.
[Don’t worry if Labor gets 54% of the TPP vote in Qld]
Labor has never come close – 50.7% in 1961 was their best.
http://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/Australian_Electoral_History/House_of_Representative_1949_Present.htm
[Good morning class. Now, what is wrong with this sentence? The answer is that the first 40 words, all the way down to “boundaries”, appears to have a particular meaning, and it’s only when you get to “boundaries” that you realise that in fact it has a different meaning, and you have to go back to the start to make sense of it.]
Here’s Steven Pinker’s explanation for why sentences of this sort can be hard to understand:
[Why does the human parser seem to lose count? Is there not enough room in short-term memory to hold more than one or two dangling phrases at a time? The problem must be more subtle. Some three-layer onion sentences are a little hard because of the memory…
The cheese that some rats I saw trying to eat turned out to be rancid.
The policies that the students I know object to most strenuously are those pertaining to smoking.
The guy who is sitting between the table that I like and the empty chair just winked.
What boggles the human parser is not the amount of memory needed but the kind of memory: keeping a particular kind of phrase in memory, intending to get back to it, at the same time as it is analysing another example of that very same kind of phrase. Examples of these “recursive” structures include a relative clause in the middle of the same kind of relative clause, or an if… then sentence inside another if… then sentence. It is as if the human sentence parser keeps track of where it is in a sentence not by writing down a list of currently incomplete phrases in the order in which they must be completed, but by writing a number in a slot next to each phrase type on a master check-list. When a type of phrase has to be remembered more than once – so that both it (the cat that…) and the identical type of phrase it is inside of (the rat that…) can be complete din order – there is not enough room in the checklist for both numbers to fit, and the phrases cannot be completed properly.]
ru
I mean it’s a “bad decision” as in a broken promise. When we vote for these people, we expect that they will do what they say (well, we don’t actually, esp us Cynics but you get the gist).
And if it is good health policy irrespective of the GFC, they should have gone to the election with it.
Diogs,
Not at all. Whingeing is a national pass time.
Labor is just testing your pissedoffedness.
You pays your money, you make a choice.
[Labor has never come close – 50.7% in 1961 was their best.]
When was the last time the Prime Minister and Treasurer of Australia were from Qld?
If it was such good legislation, why couldn’t Labor convince anyone else to vote for it?
If the Greens had voted for it, would it have passed?
It’s Time,
Go back to the beginning. Essential says 55% support the passing of the legislation.
Greens are just showing, again, they are out of touch with popular opinion.
Rudd has said the the failure of the Senate to pass the CPRS legislation does not impede him from being active in the Copenhagen negotiations.
What is the reason for the need to pass the legislation before Copenhagen starts?
Diog
I tend to treat election promises in a similar way to:
The cheques in the mail
I will respect you in the morning
I won’t *** in your mouth.
Did the medicare rebate change one vote at the 2007 election?
[Essential says 55% support the passing of the legislation.]
And how many support a higher level of carbon reduction?
Diog, does it hurt in the bum for sitting on the fence all that time? 😛
ru
Health was ranked the number 1 issue so I’m sure any health policy would have been a vote changer, one way or another.
GG
I wish Labor was testing the electorates “pissedoffness” by having a much more scientifically based CC policy. That would be something worth spending a bit of political capital on.
It’s time,
We’d all support a higher level of carbon reaction if that were an achievable target, but I thought we were talking about the Medicare Rebate.
You Greens are going a little more gaga.
[I wish Labor was testing the electorates “pissedoffness”…]
I am certain they are.
Finns
The great thing is that you can see what’s happening on both sides of the fence (well actually all three sides). There’s not much protection up on the fence though; you tend to get pot shots taken at you from all sides. 👿
[When was the last time the Prime Minister and Treasurer of Australia were from Qld?]
1941 – the Fadden government. Fadden was PM and Treasurer. Fisher was also PM and Treasurer in his three governments. This is the first time that two Queenslanders have held these portfolios at the same time.
Diogs,
Sincerely, you change your position as a matter of course, you abuse anyone in power that doesn’t agree with your current opinion (whether that be informed or otherwise) and you then whinge that no one takes you seriously.
If you want to achieve things politically you need to enunciate a consistent position, you need to take account of all views on a particular matter and you need to persist.
[I tend to treat election promises in a similar way to:]
The logical extension of this is that governments don’t need to keep any promise, but also don’t have a mandate to introduce any changes because no one expected them to make changes if they won government.
[When was the last time the Prime Minister and Treasurer of Australia were from Qld?]
I think you’re overplaying your hand there.
For an interesting insight on rural voters and city folk criticising institutions like the B & S Ball, check out this thread on The Worst of Perth, which all started over a poster at Curtin Uni advertising said event 🙂
http://theworstofperth.com/2009/09/08/inseminators-09/
This is not good for Barrell.
Just accidentally tuned in ABC702 quiz show just now:
Contestant 1 (female), Q: Who is NSW Opposition leader? hmmm, ahhh, dont know. can I consult my brain trust? yes, two more females. One said: Malcolm Turnbull? No, the other: Peter Denham? No, bye bye.
Contestant 2 (male), same quesion. hmmm, ahhh, dont know. Can i consult my brain trust? Yes. Boy: Barry O’Farrell. How old is he? 9 years old.
If only 9 years old can vote.
Diog and Growler
I have just finished reading an interesting book on Rx for the Planet. Who do you think I should forward it to?
I will add the biography of our new US ambassdor to the library. 😉
Bomber’s on 7.30 Report
Diogenes,
Here’s the full-size version of your favourite emoticon:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/thumb.php?f=Gnome-face-devilish.svg&width=2000px
Vera, the bomber looks bombed out to me.
[This is not good for Barrell.]
Doesn’t really matter. Humphrey B Bear could be leading the NSW Liberal Party and the people would still vote NSW Labor out.
His hair looks like Leigh’s did the other night, ABC need a new hairdresser Finns that could be you 😉
[Go back to the beginning. Essential says 55% support the passing of the legislation.]
Sorry GG, I thought that was the figure which you regularly post and misinterpret for support for the CPRS legislation, which you invariable fail to link to. maybe you’ll link to this 55%?
My comments at #270 were intended for the medicare levy legislation, but they apply to both sets of legislation. Again, if they are good legislation, why can’t the government convince anyone else to vote for them?
[You Greens are going a little more gaga.]
Weren’t you the poster who was too stupid or lazy to look up the meaning of “devil’s advocate” to gain some understanding of my position when you try to characterise me as “Green”. Feel free to wallow in your self-imposed ignorance.
Vera, yes, Leigh was testing the Bomber in the wind tunnel amazingly up to Mach 4.
Doesn’t really matter. Humphrey B Bear could be leading the NSW Liberal Party and the people would still vote NSW Labor out
-Bob 1234,more and more i am becoming convinced that nsw will still remain labor,albeit with more green and independent seats.
The possibilty exists for a minority labor gvt with green support.
As the cetacean has pointed out,correctly,the liberals are non existent.
The upside is more green voices in macquarie street.
[Doesn’t really matter. Humphrey B Bear could be leading the NSW Liberal Party and the people would still vote NSW Labor out.]
Bob that was true at the last NSW election, it did not happen. If the Libs think they can win elections by default they will lose the vast majority of them.
Weren’t you the poster who was too stupid or lazy to look up the meaning of “devil’s advocate” to gain some understanding of my position when you try to characterise me as “Green”. Feel free to wallow in your self-imposed ignorance.
-pwned!
GG
I don’t actually change my position all that much but I do sometimes. I don’t think of it as a negative. There is after all an infinite amount that I don’t know.
It bothers me not the slightest if anyone agrees with me or not.
ru
I think Psephos, Oz, Socrates or GP would be good choices. They are the least likely to burn the book.
[You Greens are going a little more gaga.]
GG, Lady Gaga is Greens? Must be her knicker.
It’s Time,
FYI I posted links to various posts supporting my POV in the run up to the first vote on the ETS. I’m not here to do your homework.
The link re the Medibank survey is actually today’s published poll. I’m sure you can can trouble yourself to read today’s news. Even if older stuff is beyond your ken.
As a devil’s advocate you make a very self important twat.
Governments should keep their election promises, unless circumstances change in such a way that makes keeping them irresponsible. Example: Roosevelt promised at the 1940 election to keep America out of the war. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, should he have said: “Japan has attacked but I won’t declare war because I promised to keep us out of the war”? Clearly not. Likewise, Rudd promised to keep the private health insurance rebate. Since then the GFC has hit and government revenue has collapsed. We have embarked on a major stimulus spend, a major defence spend and a pension increase. Something has to give. Means testing the rebate will save $500m a year. It is good policy and driven by the need to contain the deficit. I think this is more responsible than keeping a promise to maintain a subsidy which bleeds the budget for the benefit of the wealthy to no good purpose.