The third Newspoll in consecutive weeks is another disaster for the Coalition, showing Labor’s lead widening still further despite the government’s recent discomfort over boat arrivals. Labor is now ahead 59-41 on two-party preferred, compared with 58-42 at both last week’s unusual poll and last fortnight’s usual one. Kevin Rudd’s preferred prime minister rating is down two points to 65 per cent while Malcolm Turnbull’s is up one to 19 per cent. UPDATE: Graphic here: interestingly, 4 per cent has marched from satisfied with Kevin Rudd to dissatisfied, but Malcolm Turnbull’s disapproval rating is up six points as well. Labor leads 48 per cent to 34 per cent on the primary vote.
Elsewhere:
• Labor’s lead is steady at 58-42 according to the latest weekly Essential Research survey, which seems to be more closely resembling Newspoll than it used to. There are also various questions on the parties’ approaches to the global financial crisis and the rise in interest rates.
• Sue Neales of The Mercury reports Matthew Groom, son of former Premier Ray Groom, has nominated for Liberal preselection in the state lower house division of Denison. Neales suggests the “corporate lawyer with Tasmanian state-owned wind power company Roaring 40s” is likely to win a spot on the ticket when the party finalises preselection on Monday, which it earlier deferred because party leaders were “concerned by a lack of high-profile talent” (UPDATE: Kevin Bonham clarifies the situation in comments: Elise Archer, Michael Hodgman and Matt Stevenson were preselected in March, and the remainder of the ticket is to be finalised on Monday). Others reportedly seeking preselection are veteran incumbent Michael Hodgman, who is 70 years old and battling ill health which recently forced him to relinquish the Shadow Attorney-General position; Jenny Branch, a Glenorchy alderman who polled strongly as an independent against Treasurer Michael Aird in his upper house seat of Derwent in April; and Elise Archer, a Hobart alderman. Another Hobart alderman, regular independent candidate Marti Zucco, has been mentioned as a starter, but appears to face powerful opposition in the Liberal organisation. The result in Denison at the 2006 election was Labor three, Liberal one and Greens one; Peter Tucker at Tasmanian Politics rates the Liberals a solid chance of taking a second seat, possibly at the expense of accident-prone Labor incumbent Graeme Sturges.
• The Queensland Greens have preselected their unsuccessful Senate candidate from 2007, Larissa Waters, to head their ticket at the next election. Waters prevailed in a three-way contest over Jenny Stirling and Libby Connors, party activists and frequent candidates respectively based in Townsville and Toowoomba.
• Republished courtesy of Peter Brent at Mumble, Malcolm Mackerras in the Canberra Times lambasts Peter Dutton and his supporters over his reluctance to stand and fight in Dickson, and confidently predicts he will now not only contest the seat but win it.
Ohh, The Nationals are going to run a candidate against Mad Wilson 🙂
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/23/2722875.htm
Antony Green is riding to raise money for MS – dig deep bludgers!!!
(caution gratuitous shot of Antony in bike riding shorts)
http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2009/10/help-me-raise-money-for-ms.html
Channel 7 is using the “It’s Time” song to promote their programs. Takes me back to 1972.
[Antony Green is riding to raise money for MS – dig deep bludgers!!!
(caution gratuitous shot of Antony in bike riding shorts]
Don’t you mean “great-uitous”?
[Channel 7 is using the “It’s Time” song to promote their programs. Takes me back to 1972.]
The bastards. 😉
[Ohh, The Nationals are going to run a candidate against Mad Wilson ]
I hear it will be a runoff between ‘flash’ and “mr ed”
😉
[Ohh, The Nationals are going to run a candidate against Mad Wilson 🙂 ]
So Van Onselen was right, and esp about a high profile Kal resident.
[Don’t you mean “great-uitous”?]
He’s got legs!
Re JV at 1083 and others regarding where are the churches on refugees.
The Uniting Church http://assembly.uca.org.au/ has come out opposing Rudd’s lack of leadership on refugees, and opposing watering down of the CPRS, and supporting a Human Rights Act. But does it get any press. Not that I’ve noticed.
On refugees, this is some of what they said.
‘The Uniting Church in Australia has written to Prime Minister Rudd and Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship Sharman Stone to express concern and disappointment at the Government’s responses to asylum seekers arriving by boat.
President of the Uniting Church, Rev. Alistair Macrae, expressed dismay that issues surrounding the movement of asylum seekers were once again being confused with issues of border security. “It is not a matter of national security that people come to Australia seeking protection as refugees. Everyone has a right under international law to seek asylum.”
Rather than feeding an unrealistic fear of ‘boat people’, Rev. Macrae said “we have urged Mr Rudd to demonstrate leadership of a different kind – one that directs public discourse away from such baseless fears and towards our moral responsibility to care for vulnerable people who seek our help’.
http://assembly.uca.org.au/component/content/article/39-media/527-asylumseekers.html
[ Psephos
Posted Friday, October 23, 2009 at 6:09 pm | Permalink
….
Our whole refugee program would be hijacked by people who can afford to pay their way here.]
So it’s ok to buy a plane ticket but not ok to buy a boat ticket. I really wish people would cut the manurer.
johncanb @ 1109
Yes, all good sentiment from them, but the when the cohort has shrunk so much in the various unitings/anglicanies/pressies/methos//whatevers schisms, all comprising a minor segment of an active 7% of the population, it’s no wonder the press just yawns.
We’ve probably got more power of opinion right here on PB than all those little dessicating remnants combined.
[‘The Uniting Church in Australia has written to Prime Minister Rudd and Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship Sharman Stone to express concern and disappointment at the Government’s responses to asylum seekers arriving by boat.]
I may start listening to religious mandarins after they get their own houses in order.
BB@974:
[Lightweights all of them, their only qualification for ministerial responsibility being that they sucked Howard’s toes when he was around.]
BB, you do my heart good. Every now and then you turn in a cracker, and that’s up with your best. Onya.
psephos
[Our whole refugee program would be hijacked by people who can afford to pay their way here.]
A very offhanded comment about real pain and suffering I thought.
Hijacked? All the asylum seekers from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan already pay first. Desperate people with some money will pay to fly out. Others will pay to steam out. They know not where they go. They aren’t 10 pound pommies.
How do fleeing desperate people collectively hijack the assessment process? In the end the requirement to be a genuine refugee remains. If the efforts of the Immigration Department to get the refugees processed further up the line work, before they get on leaky boats organised by your Captain Ahab, then they would all be arriving by air to be processed, and the issue would then become, in consultation with the UN, what our proportion should be – just as it is now.
In the meantime the boat arrival element is very small, and as linked earlier: if there are more arrivals by boat then the sliding scale commensurately reduces the number arriving by air – and the result is the same total number of refugees per year (13,500 for the past 6 years).
There simply is no crisis as far as our refugee program is concerned, and humane treatment of people arriving because of sheer desperation should be automatic.
vp
What sort of ridiculous statement is that. Since when is perfection a requirement for putting a political view.
And what issues do you have with the Uniting Church. Should they give less support to social problems? They’re the biggest deliverer of social services in the country.
Antony Green’s new Electoral Pendulum is now out. This will be “very” useful to poll followers from now to the election. There will be a “lot” of very nervious Coalition MP’s following it in relation to the polls I would hazard to guess!
http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2009/10/federal-redistribution-the-2010-federal-electoral-pendulum.html#more
nervious/// Nervous!!!
Interesting that there are 25 Coalition seats with a margin of 5.5 or less which include three National seats, Calare 3.5, Hinkler 1.5 and Cowper 1.2.
If those three seats fall, which on current polling they most certainly will, then the Nats are going to be much closer to oblivion than ever.
They are more than likely to lose one or two Senate seats as well so that might explain why they are trying to distance themselves from the Libs in regard to the ETS etc.
http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2009/10/federal-redistribution-the-2010-federal-electoral-pendulum.html#more
Oh, oh, I think Calare might already be spoken for by an Independent???
111 – JV I’m wondering why you would put down the views of the Uniting Church which seem broadly in line with your own. Churches may not be a majority force in society but they certainly play a big role in issues such as refugees where they have consistently advocated better policies.
[A very offhanded comment about real pain and suffering I thought.
Hijacked? All the asylum seekers from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan already pay first. Desperate people with some money will pay to fly out. Others will pay to steam out.]
What about those who can’t afford to fly to Indonesia or Malaysia, which is the great majority? No matter how “desperate” our boat arrivals appear (and of course they are coached to look desperate), they are the aristocracy of refugees. The proletariat of refugees are sitting in the camps in Pakistan, and now also in Sri Lanka. They are the people forgotten in this debate.
[They know not where they go. They aren’t 10 pound pommies.]
They know perfectly well where they go. They fly to Indonesia with the intention of getting to Australia one way or another.
[How do fleeing desperate people collectively hijack the assessment process?]
Because every place in our refugee quota that is filled by somene who has found the money to fly to Indonesia and pay Captain Ahab is a place not available for a person sitting in a camp somewhere.
[In the end the requirement to be a genuine refugee remains. If the efforts of the Immigration Department to get the refugees processed further up the line work, before they get on leaky boats organised by your Captain Ahab, then they would all be arriving by air to be processed, and the issue would then become, in consultation with the UN, what our proportion should be – just as it is now.]
This assumes we have an infinite capacity to take in every displaced person in the world. We don’t – we have an annual quota, and if it is filled by boat arrivals, there will be none left for anyone else.
[In the meantime the boat arrival element is very small, and as linked earlier: if there are more arrivals by boat then the sliding scale commensurately reduces the number arriving by air – and the result is the same total number of refugees per year (13,500 for the past 6 years).]
So now you accept my point, that the self-selected aristocracy who can fly to Indonesia are crowding out the others. We ought to be taking refugees on the basis of need, but instead we are being forced to take them on the basis of wealth and ruthlessness.
[There simply is no crisis as far as our refugee program is concerned, and humane treatment of people arriving because of sheer desperation should be automatic.]
I agree with that, except that it is very naive to assume that the people arriving by boat are the most desperate. There are probably many people a lot more desperate who do not have the means to get to our maritime border.
[Oh, oh, I think Calare might already be spoken for by an Independent???]
Oh, oh, wrong!
John Cobb, Nat still there but I would imagine a good Independent might make it pretty hard for him to hang on.
Indie Peter Andren used to hold Calare before his tragic passing
I think this commenter on Shannahan’s piece is not too far off the money!
[All Dennis has done in this article is outline how Labor actually implemented its election policy and, when confronted with potentially damaging images of boats arriving in recent times, used populist ‘doublespeak’ to continue to implement his existing policy commitment (hence the relative silence from the Left) in a way which ‘wedged’ the Opposition against itself. This strategy was working already, but then Wilson comes along and says the most outrageous things and Rudd is also sweet with any emerging doubters in his base. Amazing political work without a single substantive change in policy – except for ‘stopping boats at source’ which is a ‘humane thing to do’ for some and the ‘tough thing to do’ for others. From here on in Rudd can say we are tough on the borders but humane at home. Bloody brilliant. Well done Kevin.]
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26246832-7583,00.html
Yeah, Possum. That’s what tricked me up for a bit!
Possum, did you see that graph on Morgan’s latest Consumer poll?
It seems to me to closely follow Labor’s gains in economic management at the expense of the Libs.
Link here.
http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2009/958/
1121 is a long one for you Psephos 🙂
You are trying valiantly to make a very difficult categorisation of refugees into an aristocracy and a proletariat. Very hard to make those assumptions before people are properly assessed. I cetainly don’t think we can assume those flying in are more deserving than the boat arrivals or vice-versa. What about the lucky ones who got here (to Ch. Is) in the last day or so by boat from Sri Lanka on the fishing vessel funded by a charity? Should they be sent back because ‘there won’t be any room for anyone else’?
Anyway, I think we all basically agree though that the best approach is for the govt to continue to attempt to get the refugees at least organised for assessment before they cast off in a tub from somewhere. Hats off to the Immigration Dept operatives and others on the ground in SE Asia at present trying to achieve that.
the most pertinant line from Antony’s electoral pendulum post:
[Given current opinion polls which show a swing of more than 3% to Labor, none of this matters unless the Coalition can improve its ratings. ]
It makes sense Scorpio – coming out of the GFC people are getting confident that the future will be pretty good.When they look back at why (and see the drama that the rest of the world has to deal with), Rudd picks up the kudos.
Wakefield @ 1120
I didn’t mean any offence, and my apologies if any was taken. I’m a bit tough on organised religion generally but was certainly not singling out the Uniting establishment for particular attention. I mean I think that conglomerate includes the Presbyterians doesn’t it? And my grand uncle as the then guy in the cassock of St Stephens in Macquarie St Sydney baptised me. I should show more respect shouldn’t I?
johncanb
Putting up a moral argument has weight only if the person, or Church, has no immoral baggage.
This is getting way off topic. Let us desist, in the name of William.
What strikes me is the close correlation of this 56% figure to the average 2PP figure for a good part of this year.
The electorate has definitely tuned in to Labor’s economic management credentials and apparently like what they see and seem to be putting a level of trust in that management.
[“Most notably, despite this week’s fall in the Consumer Confidence Rating, an increasing majority of Australians (now 56%, up 3% – and the highest for over two years since July 2007) say now is a ‘good time to buy’ major household items.]
http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2009/958/
For those PBs who want to play an active role on CC.
http://www.rightsatwork.com.au/campaigns/cleanenergyjobs/connectorssignup
Between now and the end of November, Your Rights at Work will be holding activities in conjunction with unions and local Trades and Labour Councils, taking their message to the streets in the same way they did in the Your Rights at Work campaign.
[You are trying valiantly to make a very difficult categorisation of refugees into an aristocracy and a proletariat. Very hard to make those assumptions before people are properly assessed. I cetainly don’t think we can assume those flying in are more deserving than the boat arrivals or vice-versa.]
I didn’t say they were more or less deserving. I said they had more money. A one-way airfare from Karachi to Jakarta is about $1000. Reports state that the people-smuggers are charging about $5000 for places on these boats. Living in Indonesia is fairly cheap, but not free. There are officials at both ends who have to be bribed. The whole exercise probably costs $10,000 per head. So how are these “desperate” people finding this kind of money? Through honest toil? Possibly, but most of the ways people get rich in Afghanistan or Pakistan don’t meet our defintions of desirable behaviour. I maintain my view that the people who have this kind of money are, on balance, less likely to be “desperate” than the people who don’t.
vp at 1132. Your argument is highly pertitent to a political blog. It should be bldy obvious that all political arguments are moral arguments, as political arguments are about what is the better way to go ie there are always values involved in determining what is ‘better’.. This is where Chris Ullmann was quite silly in his blog to imply that Rudd shouldn’t bring moral arguments into political debates. Its all morality mate, and the sooner we get over our naiviety that we can have a morality free political debate, the better.
Psephos,
I agree. A refugee is a refugee. UNHCR says there are millions of refugees. Anything we can do to reduce that is great.
Peter Dutton is on in 5.
[Peter Dutton is on in 5.]
Oh goody. Can hardly wait. 🙂
Geez did he show a glass jaw last night on qanda.
Grog,
I know nothing about the member for Blaxland. What can I expect?
[Geez did he show a glass jaw last night on qanda.]
he is the biggest sook since cossie.
psephos
[So how are these “desperate” people finding this kind of money? Through honest toil?]
They aren’t allowed to work in Indonesia. Some have been there 6- 8 years apparently without being able to live normal lives.
Am I hearing an little echo here of the xenophobes’ line on Vietnamese displacements in the late 70s – “Only the undeserving rich ones are getting out with all the gold in their pants and deserting their poor countrymen who can’t afford to leave and have to wear all the crap” ?
[So how are these “desperate” people finding this kind of money? Through honest toil?
They aren’t allowed to work in Indonesia. Some have been there 6- 8 years apparently without being able to live normal lives. ]
So answer my question.
Oh, boy! Did that sound like Indonesian black mail $50m.
Psephos
Are you saying that if Jews with enough money to flee the Holocaust wanted refugee status, we should have said “No” and waited for poorer ones to apply?
Kevin and SBY may just have to have another quiet chat at ASEAN.
[We are rich people in my country, we all have big houses and farms, but we have no life there,” said 35-year-old teacher Kalla, as her two young sons gathered about her legs.
Alex, a former English teacher with an American twang thanks to a previous job in a call centre, said the migrants each paid 15,000 dollars to people smugglers and flew in groups from Sri Lanka to Malaysia.
Then they spent a month living in a makeshift camp in the jungle, with little food and water, before boarding their boat to Australia.
Tossed by waves and battered by rain in their bid to reach Australia’s remote Christmas Island, the group was left in fearful limbo when the boat’s engine sputtered out.
They drifted for five days in the Indian Ocean before it was fixed.
“The ship was shaking, the waves were big, everyone was vomiting, some fell unconscious,” said a 32-year-old woman who gave her name as Shanthi.
Five hours from Christmas Island, Alex said the boat did an about-face and set a course for Java island after a smaller boat failed to show up to whisk the captain safely back to Indonesia. ]
http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/refdaily?pass=463ef21123&id=4ae14eb0b
The UNHCR daily briefing
Much (insincere) appreciation at Brendan’s farewell.
Gusface,
Did they try for Tamil Nadu?
Did Peter just say that Kevin is better than Bob Carr and Beattie?