Morgan: 60-40

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.

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.

791 comments on “Morgan: 60-40”

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  2. The correct answer is that it’s not possible and not desirable to try to resettle millions of people from the 20 poorest and worst-governed countries in the 20 richest countries. Just because people in country A are poor and wretched is not a reason why they should be entitled to move to country B, particularly when they jump the queue and turn up on B’s border demanding to be let in. The correct solution is to fix the situation in country A, which is what we did in Kosovo (fairly easy), and what we are trying to do in Afghanistan (much harder).

  3. Best newspaper political commentators in Australia?

    Hartcher, Carney, Gittins and Tingle for me. I would have added Grattan until recently but I think she’s gone downhill.

  4. [Today’s SMH had some decent contributions from David Marr and Peter Hartcher(probably in the AGE also).]

    I read those and thought the same as you Evan14. In fact David Marr’s was very ‘fair and balanced’ considering that he gives Rudd a hard time on Insiders.

    Psephos – I thought we had 2 in a row recently. Apologies if wrong.

  5. [Best newspaper political commentators in Australia?

    Hartcher, Carney, Gittins and Tingle for me. I would have added Grattan until recently but I think she’s gone downhill.]

    Yes, sadly Grattan is parroting coalition talking points these days, she’s little better than Milne and Steve Lewis.

  7. Boerwar@68:

    [I suspect that acid rain of the order required will not be as bad as global temperatures @ plus four degrees, which is where we are headed, but, hey, take your pick.]

    Your solution of adding pollutants to the atmosphere has as much chance of getting up as a whale flying.

    It is in the same category as putting up a big sail reflector out in space to reduce solar insolation.

    It’s not going to happen, it is a ridiculous solution which would probably not work anyway.

    The atmosphere is far more complicated than you think.

    For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.

    You’ve picked the wrong one.

  8. [Grattan is parroting coalition talking points these days, she’s little better than Milne and Steve Lewis.]

    No, I don’t think that, I just think she’s become dull, obvious and platitudinous.

  9. [Australia suffers from a historical hysteria about immigration. One of the very first acts of the very first Parliament in 1901 was to legislate against a supposed ”yellow horde”. This xenophobia runs deep in the national psyche]

    Nicely put, and Psephos you have it in spades.

  10. The COALition agree to a vote on the ETS in November, but say they will vote it down if their amendments aren’t accepted.

    For the sake of my credibility, I’m praying for the 10% ETS target with the agriculture fudge or I’ve got a lot of egg on my face. 😀

    [if the Government doesn’t accept the changes the legislation is likely to be voted down again, setting up a double-dissolution trigger for an early election.]

    http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,26223823-5005962,00.html

  11. I think Fran Kelly is rubbing off on Grattan altho I did watch Michelle on Agenda recently and she was very good. Held her ground when either Spiers or Gilbert tried to contradict her opinion. She was praising the Govt. about something or other but one of my senior moments has kicked in so can’t remember what it was about. Just remember thinking how complimentary she was.

  14. Adastra@83:

    [Returning to the ‘Rudd as bad boss’ story, what is the basis for the concern expressed about his staff turnover?]

    Good to see some (un)common sense. Great post.

  15. Fredn, I’m in favour of the highest possible migrant intake, including a quota of refugees proportionate to our population and to what other countries are taking. I think migration and multi-culturalism are the best things that ever happened to Australia. I’ll thank you not to accuse me of xenophobia.

  16. [Who is the most likely to become the Labor Party journalist of choice?]

    I don’t think there is one, or can be one. No prominent journalist of a centre-left disposition is willing to become a propaganda tool for the Labor Party, because they have integrity. The Murdoch hacks do that job for the Libs because they have no integrity. They wouldn’t be working for Murdoch if they did.

  17. The largest change the Rudd Govt. has made to asylum laws is that people are detained for 30 days. Refugee or go home quickly.

    This change seems to have been ignored.

  18. [I don’t think there is one, or can be one. No prominent journalist of a centre-left disposition is willing to become a propaganda tool for the Labor Party…]

    Agreed. 🙂

  20. The ABC site Most Popular items:

    * Balloon boy says he did it for the show
    * Why some dogs go barking mad
    * Police to interview balloon boy’s family again
    * Last post: WWII letter finally makes it home
    * Fev facing long ban if guilty of assault
    * Fisherman claims floating head find
    * Gold Coast scraps A1 race
    * Giant groper swallows turtle
    * Bluefin tuna stocks close to collapse
    * iSnore: Apple alarm clocks not up to the job
    * Boy to Obama: Why do people hate you?
    * Film set burns in bushfire

    Nothing there about boats or hunger strikes. In fact the only story about Australian politics is the second one (Why some dogs go barking mad) which clearly refers to the Federal Opposition.

  22. Greensborough Growler

    Great vision – you’re so right – the country is in the very best of hands. You should send that video to Malcolm.

  24. According to ABC News, the opposition won’t support the free permit system for electricity generators outlined in the Frontier Economics report.

    According to that system the government would set a benchmark for best practice energy per unit of pollution standard at fossil fuel power stations. The generator would receive free permits up to that polluting standard, and only need to buy permits for pollution that is worse than that standard.

    This was designed to save generators millions of dollars of permits and ensure the value of their generation assets declined at a much slower rate. The idea is that this would leave the generators with more money that they can then invest into new clean generation capacity.

    The opposition have probably just adopted a simpler alternative of excluding electricity generators completely.

  25. [Nothing there about boats or hunger strikes. ]

    Tom

    Those sort of stories get most popular on newscorp website as they tend to allow more comments and any story that will reflect against labor attracts young libs in swarms, thus boosting the number of hits and ranking for most popular.

  27. [No prominent journalist of a centre-left disposition is willing to become a propaganda tool for the Labor Party…]

    Which is why the better journo’s get criticised by the left and right as they are prepared to write articles critical of both.

  28. [Who really knows what the coaltion or rather the Libs, will support until they have their meeting tomorrow]

    Ru, you are wrong.

    After tomorrows meeting,they will still be barking mad.

  29. [Who really knows what the coaltion or rather the Libs, will support until they have their meeting tomorrow.]
    Well I strongly doubt they will support something that is harsher on electricity generators, so it probably means they are leaving it out all together.

  30. Dio

    There is a big difference between the Prime Minister’s Office which is full of political appointments (hacks) and the department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and the other departments of state. The heavy lifting gets done in the departments, the spin gets done in the PMO.

  31. the only position the libs will adopt will be:

    “stay”

    though every now and again one of em will roll over and play dead.

    I think malcolm’s turn is next
    😉

  32. [there was a small piece (SMH, I think) saying that Rudd’s office and the Cabinet/Ministers work far harder than Howard’s lot ever did.]

    What hard work did Howies lot have to do, adjust Pete’s hammock?, make sure Dolly never saw or recalled any emails regarding AWB?, show photos of kids swimming to Howie?, practise dog whistling techniques? working out how to make sure the rich got the lions share of the $300 billion bonaza from the mining boom.

  34. It’s Time

    It seems then that it’s just the PMO that has the staff turnover. If they’re spin doctors, I’ve almost completely lost interest in how high their turnover is. The only possible downside would be one leaking.

  36. [The only possible downside would be one leaking.]

    And yet remarkably, despite two years of stories in the Daily Toiletpaper about what a slave-driver Rudd is and how everyone hates working for him, so far as I’m aware not one former Rudd staffer has been quoted, on the record, as saying anything bad about him.

  37. [It would be great if a few copies could end up on politicians desks for their perusal.]
    Did you hear Anthony Albanese’s howler on Q&A?
    […there is two (base load electricity generation) options at the moment: coal and nuclear. They’re the two options that are around. We need to invest in renewable technology to make sure that we – to see if that can be developed and there’s great prospects with solar thermal and geothermal, etcetera. But I don’t think we can afford to say, “No, we’ll just cut off that option and not worry about it.”]
    http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s2708880.htm?show=transcript

    According to Rudd earlier this week, the current government has “cut off” nuclear as one option for base load power generation in Australia, even though it is a proven technology that works already, and not just speculative like clean coal.

  38. Don

    I am not recommending Sulphur particles!

    I do think they are the least worst of the set of engineering solutions that are available if folk want to stay hooked on coal. Since the latter will almost definitely get us to 2% and, more probably than not get us to 4%, folk may well reach for the Sulphur.

    We have lost the window of the last 20 years and are busy pissing away the window between now and 2020. Once things really start to cook, folk will reach for the desperation buttons. If so, I suggest sulphur particles will most likely be first cab off the rank. Folk will be thinking that the sea can take its chances acidity-wise as long as it stops coming ashore.

    But perhaps the clean coal merchants, the nuclear fellas and the carbon scrubbers will have it all stitched up before any of that happens.

    BTW, way I very interested in your account many posts back of vegetation changes in Tasmania.

  39. Bushfire Bill – (concerning working, office procedures, and red tape)

    I was fairly cavalier about procedure when working in a small organisation (a small business which had at most 10 full time staff in its history), but I found it didn’t translate to much larger organisations.

    In larger places procedure and rules are there in part to ensure that people know not just what you’re intending to do, but what you could possibly do along the way which might have particular consequences. Peter J. Nicol’s observation in this thread is apt. While such consequences are highly unlikely where I now work, too much latitude taken can result in a lot of work for other people and some ill-feeling from the “customers”. In other workplaces – hospitals, aeroplanes, mines, for example – one can’t even afford to entertain thought along the lines of “well… this WILL upset them, but it’ll be so much easier”.

  40. Psephos

    [so far as I’m aware not one former Rudd staffer has been quoted, on the record, as saying anything bad about him.]

    Perhaps they have heard about the elephant who blabbed about the air hostess incident.

  41. Psephos @ 136

    An unfair test, I believe.

    With practically wall-to-wall state and territory Labor governments, any ex-employee who went on the record badmouthing Rudd would be saying good bye to a galaxy of career options.

  42. Borewar, there are other places people can work, or so I’m told. Anyway, I still think that if these hordes of ex Rudd slaves were as disgruntled as the Daily Slime makes out, one of them would have expressed their disgruntlement on the record by now. They could then get a new career as a slime-slinger on the Daily Slime.

  43. I believe that in the ACT employers can face criminal charges under OH&S legislation if someone gets hurt at work.

    The employer has to ensure: that there are procedures, that the procedures are documented, that the workers are trained to know the procedures, that the training is documented, that the documentation for the procedures are accessible at all times for the workers and supervisors, that the workers actually follow the procedures, that this is documented. That there is a system for monitoring and reporting all of the above. That when workers do not follow the procedures they are counselled. That this is documented. That there are procedures for updating the procedures in the light of new standards, technologies, work practices, court cases and so forth. That these procedures are documented. That the workers are…

    So, no more grabbing a hammer and nailing a nail into the wood.

  44. Psephos

    I take your point about ambition and opportunity and that this is worth a premium in terms of long hours and hard work. I also accept that most of them would have some idea of what they are in for – although it would be hard to know what it is really like to work for someone with Rudd’s work appetite until you actually tried it.

    I agree that if there are hordes of people who have been bastardised sooner or later some of them will pop on record. Given the likelihood that Labor will be in until AGW arrives in earnest, at the moment they would be cutting off their noses to spite their faces if they went public. So I guess it will be later rather than sooner.

  45. Psephos @ 102:

    [when they jump the queue]

    Pray tell, Psephy, which queue are they jumping? The one in Afghanistan or the one in Sri Lanka?

    (You don’t have to act the tough guy all the time, you know).

  46. I forgot to add that I also agree with your other external test: the proof is in the pudding, and Rudd is invariably very well briefed.

  50. Rupert wants us to pay for writing like this from the OO website??

    [THE Sri Lankan asylum seekers holed on board a boat in Indonesia intend to end their two-day-old hunger strike and step ashore.]

    Are the OO editors smarter than grade fivers? I don’t think so!

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