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.
[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”.]
My ex-firm was a small one (14 staff). The problem they had was that they were run a duopoly of the boss and his best mate. And if you didn’t ride a motorcycle, follow rugby and like to watch the Playboy Channel in the lunchroom you were pretty weird. I guess I was pretty weird. And I guess my three predecessors who were turfed out on their ears were pretty weird too.
The processes there were idiotic. One of them involved sending an email to yourself. The culture was “We are always right and the customer, the contractors who work for us and anyone else who isn’t one of our group is dumb and also a thief.” And of course, “Cover your arse before someone else kicks it.”
I simply re-established respect up and down the line, trusted people who deserved to be trusted and cut out the stupider procedures. I changed our most complex procedureto an entirely paperless one of 100% accuracy, as opposed to fifty sheets of paper and 60% accuracy (the remainder of which was lied about, fudged and stolen from the customer). This not only saved paper, but cut processing time down from 8 hours to 2 hours per project.
Their systems were put in place when the business was small, but they did not evolve as the business grew. They just got more complex and inpenetrable. If a mistake was made then instead of fixing the core problem, they would add another layer of paperwork over the top of the error. I realised pretty early on that I had no future there because the only way I could do my job was to break their processes. Damned if I did and damned if I didn’t.
Just before and after I left they were under compulsory audit investigation by their main customer ($6 million turnover a year) for cheating, deception, poor record keeping, inaccuracy, poor service and over-quoting. The last – over-quoting – was the end result of all the others. I saw internal meetings where their processes and calculations, so obtuse that even they didn’t know how they worked, were analysed after a major complaint. When they realised how they had gone wrong and had grossly overcharged their customer during the previous 18 months their reaction was to add another layer or two of paperwork as a coverup, so that the customer would not find out. Far from others being the dumbasses and the thieves, it was our firm itself that was guilty. The realisation that they might have to make good on the fortune overcharged made them even more arrogant and insufferable.
Nevertheless, I had done my own work well, to the extent that several of our major clients ganged up on the boss and told him to make me an offer so that I’d stay. Not that I would have stayed. Let me just say that wild horses wouldn’t have kept me there: poor culture, poor performance, poor record keeping, dishonest dealings and lousy management… a boys’ club run by supposedly adult human beings.
And they were all Liberals.
That was the last straw.
#58:
Thomas, I think you’re a bit confused. The company didn’t rape her. People did. They will be dealt with by the criminal law. She signed an employment contract with an exclusion clause – that’s her problem. There’s nothing stopping her from suing the employees of the company personally. Get that through your thick skull so you can spare us from your next Republicans / big business are evil rant.
Pity that, BB. Under your Dear Leaders moronic IR policy, it has become incredibly difficult to sack anyone.
[poor culture, poor performance, poor record keeping, dishonest dealings and lousy management… a boys’ club run by supposedly adult human beings.
And they were all Liberals. ]
Isn’t the last bit redundant?
Diog (135)- I saw that BNC post. Must admit that Barry Brook has really convinced me re nuclear. It should be forwarded to Bob Brown!
[Must admit that Barry Brook has really convinced me re nuclear.]
IFR is worthy of consideration. The generation II technology is still very problematic.
[Patrick Fogarty
Posted Saturday, October 17, 2009 at 9:47 pm | Permalink
Pity that, BB. Under your Dear Leaders moronic IR policy, it has become incredibly difficult to sack anyone.]
It’s always been difficult to sack the boss.
The only way that I’m ever going to pay for old Rupert’s content on the net is if I am fully refunded with interest.
News Corp are dreaming! The only slight possible chance that people might pay Murdoch is if the ABC starts charging for it’s content, and given that the ABC is funded by the taxpayer I don’t think that will be happening.
Maybe Rupert should start thinking about doing something productive for the planet in the time that he has left on it instead.
Michael
I followed Barry on his journey through CC and came to the same conclusion as him, albeit with about 1% of his knowledge of the topic. I actually voted NDP as a youngster but I’ve come around.
“Dear Leaders moronic IR policy”
True to form with the name calling PF. Imagine if Rudd solves the boat people issue. The Liberals will have nothing left. Wow! imagine the name calling then.
Psephos at 103. Because of your tribal hatred of Newscorp you have left some very good political commentators off your list. Namely Mike Steketee, George Megalogenis Jack the Insider (who is he?) and Laurie Oakes. Mike used to be SMH and don’t know why he moved to Oz, but he is very good. Like Gittins he is an economist and he concentrates on the facts and the issues rather than the show and process of politics. His latest article has had a misleading headline put on by a NEWSCORP subeditor, but is a very cutting picture of the ridiculousness of Turnbull’s position on the economic stimulus. And some interesting stuff about the Great Depression.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26216016-7583,00.html
Speaking of Newscorp the anagrams for NEWSCORP INTERNATIONAL are
Reptilian owners cannot …..
New pinnacle on traitors
Now transient ponce liar
Raw porn, No nice lean tits!
An inane, low-cost printer
Oh great, just saw a promo on Nine News Perth about refugees being Welfare Cheats.
Think the story is on Monday.
[I followed Barry on his journey through CC and came to the same conclusion as him, albeit with about 1% of his knowledge of the topic. I actually voted NDP as a youngster but I’ve come around.]
dio
You seem pretty good at this road to damascus stuff.
[Psephos
Posted Saturday, October 17, 2009 at 7:30 pm | Permalink
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]
Psephos; prattling on about millions of refugees, when the issue is a few thousand arriving in leaky boats lines up vary nicely with “The Yellow Peril”. I’m left with the impression that your peril is a particular imaginary friend, “The Islam peril”.
I really enjoyed your postings that tried to convince readers “The immigration zone” had nothing to do with a legal dance around our obligations under UN charters. The debate could be moved forward if there was a little bit of honesty on both sides of politics; I don’t expect it.
I don’t like refugees being used as a political football, but Turnbull started it, and I think Rudd has done the right thing pushing him into lala land. It is however nothing to be proud of.
Are the Republicans full of sick minded people?
[The letter was put together by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who has repeatedly argued that protecting gay people from hate crimes will help pedophiles.]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/16/kevin-jennings-should-res_n_323547.html
SNIP: Personal attack deleted – The Management.
This is worth repeating as it demonstrates that the Republicans in the USA will go so far as to be pro-rape in order to keep some mate business from ever having to be sued.
I don’t think they could possibly fall lower than this.
[Jon Stewart Takes On 30 Republicans Who Voted Against Franken Rape Amendment]
[In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her Halliburton/KBR co-workers while working in Iraq and locked in a shipping container for over a day to prevent her from reporting her attack. The rape occurred outside of U.S. criminal jurisdiction, but to add serious insult to serious injury she was not allowed to sue KBR because her employment contract said that sexual assault allegations would only be heard in private arbitration–a process that overwhelmingly favors corporations.]
[This year, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) proposed an amendment that would deny defense contracts to companies that ask employees to sign away the right to sue. It passed, but it wasn’t the slam dunk Jon Stewart expected. Instead the amendment received 30 nay votes all from Republicans.
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/15/jon-stewart-takes-on-30-r_n_321985.html
I think to some extent Psephos is fighting the wars of 2001 on this issue. And things were bad back then. I remember being told that what was said at the time of the Tampa in focus groups (run for the information of the ALP) was blood curdling stuff. It was racist and anti-Islamist without reason. But don’t forget this was after Sept 11. And Sept 11 did have a visceral impact on many and pushed the fear quotient up amazingly. So there is no question the ALP back in 2001 did have to respond to the enormous community concern on this issue, (and the liberal left hated what the ALP did). It was really bad luck that Howard was in govt at the time and was able to control the agenda.
But things are I think different now. There is a much less vitriolic response to Jack the insdier’s liberal take on the issue than I expected, for example. I think people’s fear levels are down. Its not to say that the ALP should not be vigilant on this issue. But one can be more positive in the messages that go out, and less focussed on the ‘we will protect your security’ message.
[Adam, you seem pretty good at this abject ignorance stuff.]
leave psehp alone,you bully.
The wet is due to commence soon. The boat arrivals will in all likelihood slow or even stop. The recent influx is probably due to trying to beat the monsoon. A new political theme will be required by the Murdoch mercenaries.
Turnbull will still be in trouble.
Is this Morgan Poll before or after the “Lets demonise the hapless reffo scum” incident?
Hey Dio.
Question: My mother-in-law 86 who had a hip operation just moved to single room after diagnosed with a golden staph ‘superbug’. Is there just one variety of this – the MRSA or other versions?
WA Attorney-General Christian Porter on Stateline WA talking about the new Police Stop and Search Powers.
http://www.abc.net.au/stateline/wa/content/2006/s2716768.htm
# 168:
Idiot, explain how voting to oppose an amendment banning exclusion clauses in contracts is being “pro-rape”? That is an egregious accusation.
Patrick:
It’s supportive of rape culture – when you talk to a woman you might uunderstand
[The rape occurred outside of U.S. criminal jurisdiction, but to add serious insult to serious injury she was not allowed to sue KBR because her employment contract said that sexual assault allegations would only be heard in private arbitration…..]
[This year, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) proposed an amendment that would deny defense contracts to companies that ask employees to sign away the right to sue.]
[the amendment received 30 nay votes all from Republicans.]
Woman contractors can be raped as much as any male contractor wants to and they have no right to sue.
Amazing that any contract should have this clause…
[her employment contract said that sexual assault allegations ]
as it acknowledges that sexual assault is a problem, it happens.
Wonder why they didn’t insert a clause like…sexual assault on another forfeits all wages. But no…they instead takes away the right of a woman to sue if it happens to them.
The Republicans, all of them there at the vote, voted to NOT outlaw such clauses.
By giving no protection at all against rape of an American citizen, as other contractors would know they can safely rape without fear of an American court, the Republicans are doing two things – supporting an environment that ultimately makes rape a safe activity and, ensures that a victim cannot complain.
The Republicans are surely pro-rape.
This discussion is both unproductive and off-topic.
Sorry William
I note that all of the msm are pushing the line that Turnbull has put his career on the line by telling the party to back him or sack him, even though Turnbull tried to play this down during the week. They say a week is a long time in politics – it’s also going to be an extremely interesting week, espercially the next 24-48 hours.
Tom.
Sharman Stone on The Insiders this morning – she’s a real piece of work!
Oh geez. How dumb is this:
[CHILD experts are sending Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to the naughty corner over his admission he smacked his children when they were young.
The Sunday Mail reports leading psychologists and child advocates say Mr Rudd sent the wrong message to Australian parents when he said that it was okay to give children a smack.
Weighing in to the debate, Mr Rudd said: “And the rule that’s been applied in our family ever since they were tots is that if they’re doing something dangerous they’ll get a, you know, whack across the knuckles.”
“The key thing is a gentle tap on the wrists which is usually, if you know anything about two and three-year-olds, the cause of the quivering bottom lip and the general collapse into tears.” ]
Yep a “gentle tap on the wrists” is now a bad example.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26225279-421,00.html
TP
There is really only one kind of Staph aureus (aureus means golden in Latin) “superbug” and that one is MRSA, which stands for methicillin-resistant or multiple-resistant staph aureus. The bacteria is NO more virulent than common staph aureus but it does require different antibiotics. Most staph are killed by penicillin-family compounds but MRSA isn’t.
Vancomycin is the most common antibiotic used for MRSA. It’s very expensive and has more side-effects than the very cheap penicillin-family antibiotics. Vanc works just as well as the penicillin types.
The main reason for isolating your grandmother would be to reduce the risk of cross-contamination to other patients. The most important thing is that your grandmother should be fine.
We have an argument ATM in SA that we should build a new RAH with mainly single rooms. One argument, particularly liked by the public, is that this would reduce the number of people getting resistant organisms.
Amazing how the Howard Huggers and Hard Right (this means you Sharmin Stone) are now Bleeding Hearts for our poor brown brothers from across the sea. Poor Rudd… he can’t do anything right.
This is the issue – according to the Insiders luminaries – that will being him down, if anything will. This time the honeymoon will be over.
Potentially if it were to go ahead, a very poor abuse of system…
http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2009/10/stacking-the-ballot-paper-in-bradfield.html#more
Did anyone see Stutchbury on “Insiders” trying to argue “The Australian” isn’t a right wing rag.?
LOL, and he is sitting in the chair reserved for right wingers on the show.
Thanks Dio. The infection was discovered from a swab rather than worrisom systemic symptons. Will now have 10 days intravn antibiotics.
[Grog
Posted Sunday, October 18, 2009 at 10:10 am | Permalink
Oh geez. How dumb is this:
CHILD experts are sending Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to the naughty corner over his admission he smacked his children when they were young.
……]
It always seemed strange to me that this crowd prefer mental
punishment over physical punishment. Which does more long term damage, public humiliation (the naughty corner) or a quick, get it all over and done with, slap on the bum?
[Did anyone see Stutchbury on “Insiders” trying to argue “The Australian” isn’t a right wing rag.?]
What was funnier was how he said that The Australian had vigorously covered the “climate change debate”, by which I think he was referring to The Australian publishing about a dozen climate change denial articles, and Chris Mitchell receiving an award from the petroleum industry.
It was the Dover High School board defence applied to climate change, i.e. that teaching Intelligent Design instead of Evolution means covering ‘the debate’, even though in both cases there is no real debate.
Stutchbury also mentioned the Schools spending program and said how The Australian’s campaign re waisteful spending had been vindicated and had convinced people that building halls was not such a good idea. Really? What proof do you have of this Michael? Polls? Friends opinions? How many complaints did the Fed government receive again? Wasn’t it a mere 69?
GB – I was appalled by that ‘holier than thou’ lot on Insiders today – including Uhlmann. Where were they when the Tampa and Siev X things were on. Were they criticising Howard then – I can’t remember too much carry on about his attitudes at the time.
Altho Lenore was fair and made good comment about Indonesia and Paul Kelly backed that up. Loved the Downer impersonation. I bet Mike has been waiting years to do that and he had a ball with it.
And what is it with Liberal women and the mean looking eyes. Stone draws her eyes into a thin, mean line and Bishop gives you the cold, starey look. They are a bit creepy. Are there any Labor women who come close to that.
In fact nearly everything published in The Australian concerning the school building program turned out to be wrong.
Michelle Grattan has become an economist now.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/time-for-rudd-to-shift-gear-on-stimulus-road-dip-20091018-h2eq.html
The Murdoch news brands have been steadily degraded over the years, IMO. There must be a very large number of news-consumers who have completely given up on the News Corp products. Many here – including me – have a reflex response to News-corp content: when it comes to politics, public affairs, economic issues and business, it is most likely not true and often at best only part-true. This is a huge dilemma for News: how can they hold (let alone build) consumer loyalty when their product is deeply mistrusted.
News have no-one to blame but themselves for this. They treat their potential consumers with disdain and deserve to lose them.
Insiders really is not worth watching any more (if it ever was). I actually had to rewind Fran Kelly’s comments as she was talking about sliding popularity and not knowing where he stands, and I was convinced she must have been talking about Turnbull, but it was Rudd…
Very pleased that the right-wing comments have stuck to the OO- about time
The biggest problem with the Insiders is that they comment within a vacuum: you’d be forgiven for thinking that the government was BEHIND in the polls if you judged it by their discussion. Surely any reasonable political discussion should incorporate the context of the current polling…
Journalists are self-appointed experts on anything they choose to turn their minds to.
Yes, GB – they’re all seem to be on that wagon now. Stutchbury this morning had glee written all over his face when talking about it. He thinks he’s onto something – Labor is going to lose the 2010 election because the economy will be strong.
What a farce that lot are. The good part for us is that most people can discard their silly writings nowdays, with ease.
[Very pleased that the right-wing comments have stuck to the OO- about time]
I don’t understand why a newspaper should have an ideological slant at all.
Why is Mitchell so surprised that Rudd disagrees with a paper than is ideologically opposed to the government?
In fact the name “Insiders” has become a misnomer. It is hard to think of the panelists having the inside story on anything other than their own delusions and pretensions.
The ABC are wasting money putting together a program that seems to exist only to indulge the hackneyed prejudices of a handful of worn out journalists
Particularly bizarre on “Insiders” was Chris Uhlmann’s increasingly intense rant accusing Rudd of now hypocritically betraying his own morals by talking tough about the boat people issue. It seemed to me that Uhlmann had just been waiting for an opportunity to go the mongrel on Rudd and thinks this is the perfect time to let rip.