Roy Morgan has simultaneously unloaded two sets of polling figures, as it does from time to time. The regular fortnightly face-to-face poll, conducted over the previous two weekends from a sample of 1684, has Labor’s lead nudging up to 60-40 compared with 59.5-40.5 at the previous such poll. Both major parties are down 1.5 per cent on the primary vote – Labor to 49.5 per cent, the Coalition to 34 per cent – while the Greens are up from 7.5 per cent to 9 per cent. There is also a phone poll of 695 respondents conducted mid-week, which finds a slight majority favouring “maintaining a balanced budget” over vaguely defined alternative economic objectives. The poll has Labor’s lead on voting intention at 58-42 on two-party preferred and 46.5-37 on the primary vote. The Greens are on 10.5 per cent.
Plenty happening on the electoral front, not least the finalisation of the federal redistribution for Queensland. This offers a few surprises, and may be a rare occasion where a major party’s submission has actually had an effect. Two changes in particular were broadly in line with the wishes of the Liberal National Party, which marshalled a considerable weight of media commentary to argue that the Coalition had been hard done by. As always, Antony Green has crunched the numbers: all estimated margins quoted herein are his.
• Most interestingly, the changes to Dickson that sent Peter Dutton scurrying for refuge have been partly reversed. As the LNP submission requested, the electorate has recovered the rural area along Dayboro Road and Woodford Road that it was set to lose to Longman. However, only a small concession was made to the LNP’s request that the troublesome Kallangur area be kept out of the electorate. The electoral impact is accordingly slight, clipping the notional Labor margin from 1.3 per cent to 1.0 per cent. Peter Dutton is nonetheless sufficiently encouraged that he’s indicating he might yet stand and fight – or less charitably, he’s found a pretext to get out of the corner he had backed himself into. Labor has received a corresponding boost in its marginal seat of Longman, where Jon Sullivan’s margin has been cut from 3.6 per cent at the election to 1.7 per cent, instead of the originally proposed 1.4 per cent.
• Major changes to Petrie and Wayne Swan’s seat of Lilley have largely been reversed. It had been proposed to eliminate Petrie’s southern dog-leg by adding coastal areas from Shorncliffe and Deagon north to Brighton from Lilley, which would be compensated with Petrie’s southern leg of suburbs from Carseldine south to Stafford Heights. The revised boundaries have eliminated the former transfer and limited the latter to south of Bridgeman Downs. Where the original proposal gave Labor equally comfortable margins in both, the revision gives Wayne Swan 8.8 per cent while reducing Yvette D’Ath to an uncomfortable 4.2 per cent. Retaining Shorncliffe, Deagon and Brighton in Lilley had been advocated in the LNP submission. Almost-local observer Possum concurs, saying the revised boundaries better serve local communities of interest.
• South of Brisbane and inland of the Gold Coast, changes have been made to the boundary between Forde and the new electorate of Wright, with a view to consolidating the rural identity of the latter. Forde gains suburban Boronia Heights and loses an area of hinterland further south, extending from suburban Logan Village to rural Jimboomba. Labor’s margin in Forde has increased from 2.4 per cent to 3.4 per cent, and the Coalition’s in Wright is up from 3.8 per cent to 4.8 per cent.
• Little remains of a proposed northward shift of the boundary between Kennedy and Leichhardt from the Mitchell River to the limits of Tablelands Regional council. Kennedy will now only gain an area around Mount Molloy, 150 kilometres north-west of Cairns. Its boundary with Dawson has also been tidied through the expansion of a transfer from Dawson south of Townsville, aligning it with the Burdekin River. None of the three seats’ margins has changed.
• Moreton gains a park and golf course from Oxley in the west and loses part of Underwood to Rankin in the south-east, with negligible impact on their margins.
• Maranoa has gained the area around Wandoan from Flynn, making the boundary conform with Western Downs Regional Council. This boosts Labor’s margin in Flynn from 2.0 per cent to 2.3 per cent, compared with 0.2 per cent at the election.
• Three minor adjustments have been made to the boundary between the safe Liberal Sunshine Coast seats of Fisher and Fairfax, allowing the entirety of Montville to remain in Fisher.
• Ryan has taken a sliver of inner city Toowong from Brisbane.
Other news:
• The Financial Review’s Mark Skulley reported on Wednesday that the federal government was moving quickly to get its electoral reform package into shape. Labor is said to be offering a deal: if the Liberals drop their opposition to slashing the threshold for public disclosure of donations (which the Coalition and Steve Fielding voted down in March), the government will include union affiliation fees in a ban on donations from corporations, third parties and associated entities. Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald says the New South Wales branch of the ALP alone receives $1.3 million in revenue a year from the fees, which unions must pay to send delegates to party conferences. According to Skulley, many union leaders fear a Rudd plot to “Blairise” the party by weakening union ties, with Coorey naming the ACTU and Victorian unions as “most hostile”. It is further reported that the parties propose to cover the foregone revenue by hiking the rate of public funding. VexNews “understands” that an increase from $2.24 per vote to $10 is on the cards, potentially increasing the total payout from $49 million to $200 million. The site says Westpac currently has a formal claim over Labor’s public funding payout after the next election, as the party is currently $8 million in debt. The Liberals are said to be keen because they’re having understandable trouble raising funds at the moment. A further amendment proposes to restrict political advertising by third parties. As well as being stimulating politically, some of these moves might be difficult constitutionally.
• A proposed referendum on reform to the South Australian Legislative Council has been voted down in said chamber. The referendum would have been an all-or-nothing vote to change terms from a staggered eight years to an unstaggered four, reduce its membership from 22 to 16, allow a deliberative rather than a casting vote for the President and establish a double dissolution mechanism to resolve deadlocks. Another bill amending the Electoral Act has been passed, although it will not take effect until after the March election. A number of its measures bring the state act into line with the Commonwealth Electoral Act: party names like “Liberals for Forests” have been banned, provisions have been made for enrolment of homeless voters, and MPs will be able to access constituents’ dates of birth on the electoral roll (brace yourselves for presumptuous birthday greetings in the mail). The number of members required of a registered party has been increased from 150 to 200: if you’re wondering why they bothered, the idea was to hike it to 500 to make life difficult for the putative Save the Royal Adelaide Hospital party, but the government agreed to a half-measure that wouldn’t threaten the Nationals. Misleading advertising has also been introduced as grounds for declaring a result void if on the balance of probabilities it affected the result. The Council voted down attempts to ban “corflute” advertising on road sides and overturn the state’s unique requirement that how-to-vote cards be displayed in each polling compartment.
• Deborah Morris of the Hastings Leader reports Helen Constas, chief executive of the Peninsula Community Legal Centre, has been preselected as Labor’s candidate for the south-eastern Melbourne federal seat of Dunkley, where Liberal member Bruce Billson’s margin was cut from 9.3 per cent to 4.0 per cent at the 2007 election. Constas was said to have had “a convincing win in the local ballot”. UPDATE: Andrew Crook of Crikey details Constas’s preselection as a win for the left born of disunity between the Bill Shorten and Stephen Conroy forces of the Right; Right faction sources respond at VexNews.
• The ABC reports that Nationals members in the state electorate of Dubbo have voted not to abandon their preselection privileges by being the guinea pig in the state party’s proposed open primary experiment. There is reportedly a more welcoming mood in Port Macquarie, which like Dubbo is a former Nationals seat that has now had consecutive independent members.
Here’s a good from crikey today on Drs’ reaction to coal industry/health
http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/10/19/doctors-on-global-warming-its-about-health-and-security/#
HoR Speaker advised the house both Costello and Nelson resignations have been received.
It’s still the same old place as they say.
Hmmmm, few hundred refugees from Sri-Lanka etc and all the knickers are got knotted. What will happen when the Indonesians, there are 230 millions of them remember, are starting to come to OZ.
Just asking.
Socrates,
Yep, the honest accounting is a problem but I suspect there will be some good money in the GHG auditing business in a few years to at least partly address this. Lets hope there is a little more separation between the commercial interests of the auditors and the companies though and Enron/Anderson issues don’t bring us all undone.
Re the avartar,: I hadn’t thought about it from that angle – may have to consider a switch – maybe Monty Burns and I can go on a pro nuclear push 😉
Of interest today will be how hard Roxon goes after Dutton. It must be tempting to show no mercy and get him thrown out.
[To,hopefully,keep the party relevant and in touch with the current community thinking.]
Gusface, last night you criticised nuclear reactors for taking too long to build. This is a fair enough criticism, it would take Australia at least 10 years to build the first one (given the need for brand new regulation etc). Having said that Japan built several reactors during the 1980s in 5 years.
But it is a fair point, nuclear reactors are complex structures that take years to build. However, to put this into some context, the Victorian government announced in March of this year that it will provide $100 million to build a solar power plant capable of producing 330 GWh per year. This compares with 1 modern 1200 MW nuclear reactor that can produce about 8000 GWh of electricity in a year, assuming typical 99% efficiency.
So to get the same capacity as one nuclear reactor, you would need to build about 25 of these proposed Victorian solar plants.
But the real kicker, is this, when does the Victorian government expect this 330 GWh solar power plant to be operating? Well, by within 6 years, by 2015:
[“Expressions of interest will be called for immediately and the aim will be to have the plant operating by 2015.”]
http://www.premier.vic.gov.au/premier/victorian-government-to-fund-new-solar-power-station.html
So you could spend 5 – 10 years building one nuclear reactor, or you could build about 25 of these solar plants, when 1 is going to take 6 years to build. How long do you think it would take to build 25? Even if you could build 2 a year (unlikely) after the first one, that is still 18 years!) The other problem is, where in Victoria is there enough free space to build 25 solar power plants?
So again, sure a single nuclear reactor takes years to build, and costs a lot of money. But when comparing on the same electricity generation capacity basis, nuclear actually costs less than solar, and takes less time to build the same capacity.
Actually, While I’m on the accounting/ auditing thing, the reason Agriculture and things like soil carbon (and biochar) are out of the early stages of the CPRS is because accounting is extremely difficult and costly at the moment. Until there is better certainty regarding measurement of stored soil carbon, including it is only going to undermine the CPRS.
The Government has stated this numerous times but the press seem to overlook it. Apparently logic has little place in political (and environmental) reporting in the MSM these days. Perhaps we need some political educational ads on Tele to explain this sort of stuff …
[The wealth of info is good to weigh up the pro’s and cons regarding CC .]
That’s just ridiculous, that page doesn’t weigh up the pros and cons at all! This is a perfect example of how closed minded you are.
This page is a much fairer overview of the issues that actually explains benefits and problems with nuclear power:
http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/FullSummary
As I explained in my last post, solar has problems as well, i.e. the fact you need to build about 25 large solar plants just to produce the same amount of electricity as 1 modern nuclear reactor.
A lol moment in the House. Kevin turns to his front bench to ask what Tony Abbot is the shadow minister for and then proceeds to quote him on the CPRS.
Any large power station is complex and takes years to build. Nuclear is only slightly worse here. Hazelwood took seven years to build in the 60s; Stanwell was similar in the 90s. Just building all the supporting infrastrucutre – water supply, transmission grid etc – takes years, apart from the plant itself.
[The wealth of info is good to weigh up the pro’s and cons regarding CC .
That’s just ridiculous, that page doesn’t weigh up the pros and cons at all! This is a perfect example of how closed minded you are.]
From that page:
[Nuclear power generates approximately 20 percent of all U.S. electricity. And because it is a low-carbon source of around-the-clock power, it has received renewed interest as concern grows over the effect of greenhouse gas emissions on our climate.
Yet nuclear power’s own myriad limitations will constrain its growth, especially in the near term. These include:
?Prohibitively high, and escalating, capital costs ?
?Production bottlenecks in key components needed to build plants ?
?Very long construction times ?
?Concerns about uranium supplies and importation issues ?
?Unresolved problems with the availability and security of waste storage ?
?Large-scale water use amid shortages ?
?High electricity prices from new plants ?
Nuclear power is therefore unlikely to play a dominant—greater than 10 percent—role in the national or global effort to prevent the global temperatures from rising by more than 2°C above preindustrial levels.]
quite rationally presented.
[quite rationally presented.]
That’s not balance at all, that is a completely biased and superficial analysis.
You can copy and paste things all you like, but it doesn’t mean they feature good arguments, in this case what you have pasted doesn’t feature an argument at all.
Shows
your continual sledging and hazing is tres boring.
🙁
BTW
the site I mentioned has been nominated by Time as one of the most influential as regards the CC debate.
I think I’ll go with Time and others view rather than your cherrypicked confection.
The member for Kingston has been getting many questions to ask lately.
[I think I’ll go with Time and others view rather than your cherrypicked confection.]
LOL! So you cherry pick some criticisms from a webpage, then accuse others of cherry picking!? Do you have a team of comedy writers working on your material?
Of course you didn’t actually bother reading the webpage I linked to, which is exactly what I expected. You just can’t handle engaging with arguments that challenge your biased view.
Oh, and you completely ignored my post explaining that the Victorian solar project (that will produce 1/25th of the power of a nuclear reactor) is going to take 6 years to build!
But hey, I guess it is too much to expect you to criticise nuclear power and solar power in a way that is consistent.
[The member for Kingston has been getting many questions to ask lately.]
Which is great considering she has the best voice of all time. It probably just means she smokes too much.
When you get monstered by Jenny Macklin, Tony Abbot, you really are a lost cause.
That question didn’t go too well for Tony.
Macklin fails to mention that due to her monumental incompetence, there have been no new houses built with the NT intervention funds. Shame on her.
[Which is great considering she has the best voice of all time.]
Yes, she is good to listen to.
Whoa! Swan’s on fire. So much for the weakest link.
The demountables were sent to Alice Springs by the previous government for aboriginal housing. Under Mal Brough, not one was used for that purpose.
I think we have heard the end of that one.
[Whoa! Swan’s on fire. So much for the weakest link.]
Except that he went on too long. He should have stopped after “laughing stock.”
No 571
Pffft. Swan sounds like he’s on his last breath. Terrible.
Regarding Aboriginal housing, I can understand criticism of the Fed government over expenditure and waste, but not the rate of progress. Aren’t delays the fault of the NT government, as they are the delivery agency? Assuming that is the case, you can critiicse the Feds for handing the money over with inadequate conditions, or not handing the money over, but you can’t criticise the Federal government when a state/territory fails to delvier, if the Feds gave them the $ on time.
Loved that bit Swannie.
Steve Ciobo falling down from 46 to 93 on the list of the Gold Coast’s 100 most influential people!!! lol 🙂
Nicola just stuck it to Peter Dutton. Gutless and spineless were two epithets.
[Nicola just stuck it to Peter Dutton.]
They must have decided that it wouldn’t look good to kick him too hard while he’s down, so she concentrated on policy, but it was a nice finish.
Julia and Malcolm seemed to be having a friendly chat across the chamber while Rudd was speaking there.
Peter Dutton steps in to fill the Gutless Zone about to be vacated by the other Peter.
How can you not love them. 🙂
[Who says the Coalition partyroom was a fizzer.
In fact, we now learn there was an extraordinary event – Liberal MP Peter Lindsay declared Mr Turnbull a “man of steel”.
Mr Lindsay, who we understand was fond of declaring his love for the previous leader, rose tentatively on Sunday to offer these words of support: “Malcolm, you’ve gone through a lot in the last week.
“You’ve put up with a lot.
“You’ve withstood it Malcolm. I think we’ve found another Man Of Steel”.
While right-wing MPs vomited into their amendment papers, we understood several MPs declared this the biggest suck-up to a leader since former TAFE minister Gary Hardgrave erupted in a partyroom meeting during the Howard years during a discussion of rain and weather patterns.
“And long may you reign over us, Prime Minister!,’’ Mr Hardgrave screeched.
Don’t laugh. He did get appointed to the ministry ahead of scores of other able-bodied candidates. ]
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/samanthamaiden/index.php/theaustralian/comments/malcolm_our_man_of_steel/
569 & 574 – Predictable GP, predictable.
Every time Dolly Downer pops up to give his considered opinion on the Rudd Government in the media, this should be compulsory viewing prior to reading or watching his latest contribution!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfGfEb2EuQo&feature=related
No wonder the Libs are gunning for Red Kerry in the Senate. He upsets them occasionally! 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzaGerHZCIc&feature=related
Not quite sure if Jack the Insider has upset Rupert or not. His latest offering seems to be blocked by the Oz’s IT person.
[ONE vital element has been missing from the will-they-or-won’t-they-pay debate about online news services: No one has yet defined the product. It is…]
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/jacktheinsider/index.php/theaustralian/comments/time_for_a_content_reality_check/
Mark Day though, seems to have got away with it so far.
[ONE vital element has been missing from the will-they-or-won’t-they-pay debate about online news services: No one has yet defined the product.
It is myopic and fanciful to believe the public will be asked to pay for news sites as they exist now. That would be a recipe for rejection. What is in development is an entirely new approach to online masthead-branded newspaper sites. They’ll be more akin to social networks, a hybrid of news, services, commerce, information and entertainment designed for like-minded people or communities. This is nothing less than the reinvention of the typical masthead site—one that offers value to users and multiple revenue streams to their owners. ]
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/markday/index.php/theaustralian/comments/time_for_a_content_reality_check/
Or it could just be one big stuff-up resulting from reducing staff numbers. ie Get the same person to do two different blogs or with less IT people, the blogs get mixed up and stuffed up!
Macklin has made only one big mistake cf Indigenous housing. It was to ignore the history of what the states and territories do with Indigenous-specific funding.
Having made that mistake, the only question is whether she can get a search (for what remains of the funds) and rescue mission established before it is too late.
Essential here:
http://www.essentialmedia.com.au/Media/Essential_Report_191009.pdf
No change in TPP – 58-42 usual way.
Some interesting Qs on better economic manager.
I believe the Champagne and Cigars are in plentiful supply in the Hockey household according to Twitter:
[JoeHockey excited to announce that Ignatius Babbage-Hockey born today – a new brother for Xavier and Adelaide….two very proud parents here!about 1 hour ago from web]
I missed QT today, did Smirk get to give a farewell speech like Brendan, or is he hanging around until the end of this sitting.
Just asking because it was the next day that Kev gave Brendan a job 😉
Barnaby Joyce backs Bill Clinton and Al Gore for the Coalition leadership:
Wilson Tuckey explains the Coalition amendments:
[…our proposal is that we should compensate the electrical generators further so they can continue polluting… it’s a ‘pay to pollute scheme’.]
[I missed QT today, did Smirk get to give a farewell speech like Brendan, or is he hanging around until the end of this sitting.]
No he didn’t give such a speech. Today was his (and Nelson’s) last day in parliament. I have no idea if he actually went to the chamber. He probably spent the day cleaning out his office.
Thanks Showson, there was a clip of him on the news hurrying away from reporters saying that he didn’t want to talk about the ETS.
Both Costello and Nelson gave their valedictory speeches some weeks ago. No need for more self indulgence.
I see in Estimates today the fibs are after red Kerry, I am sure their board members could supply the information mark Scott refused to divulge, IMHO he is worth every penny he gets
Virginia Trioli caught not being completely objective:
http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/if-you-think-im-crazy-have-a-look-at-the-ets/
(mind you, I agree with her)
[I see in Estimates today the fibs are after red Kerry, I am sure their board members could supply the information mark Scott refused to divulge, IMHO he is worth every penny he gets]
Yep, and it’s all because Mark Scott gave Unca Rupert the Royal Finger re paying for online content 🙂
[Mr Scott also defended his recent comments about the future of online news content.
In a public lecture last week, Mr Scott criticised News Limited’s plans to charge consumers for online news and promised that online ABC content would always be free.
News Limited executive Richard Freudenstein says with more than $800 million in taxpayer funding each year, claims the ABC’s content is free are laughable.
“I was simply pointing out in the speech that we won’t be charging a second time, because the public has already paid for the content,” Mr Scott told the Senate estimates hearing.
“I suppose I was simply being sceptical of a model that suggested that everybody would be charging for all content and therefore the public broadcaster should either charge as well or vacate the field.
“I just don’t think that’s going to happen.”]
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/19/2718285.htm?section=justin
I don’t see the connection, Frank, sorry.
552
Hasn`t Nelson already taken up the Ambassador`s post. Thus disqualifying himself from Parliament (under section 45)?
[Hasn`t Nelson already taken up the Ambassador`s post.]
I don’t think he starts until February.