Morgan: 56.5-43.5

Morgan seems to be back to reporting weekly face-to-face polling, at least for the time being: the latest survey of 1014 respondents has Labor down 1.5 per cent to 45 per cent and the Coalition down 2 per cent to 36.5 per cent, changing the two-party vote from 56-44 to 56.5-43.5. The Greens are up a point to 9 per cent, Family First two to 3 per cent.

Elsewhere:

• Previously believed bound for marginal Macarthur, Labor MP Chris Hayes has now been offered safe Fowler to compensate for Reid MP Laurie Ferguson’s accommodation in his existing seat of Werriwa. This is despite the fact that Ferguson wanted Fowler while Hayes preferred to remain in Werriwa, which was impossible because Fowler’s Right-controlled branches did not want Ferguson on their turf. The arrangement is a win for Julia Gillard and the “soft Left” over Anthony Albanese and the “hard Left”, which wanted Werriwa to go to Damien Ogden of the Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union. However, the drama may not be over yet: also out in the cold is Ed Husic of the Communications Electrial and Plumbing Union, whom the Right still wishes to accommodate. Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald reports talk he might replace Roger Price in Chifley. Macarthur presumably available again to its candidate from 2007, Nick Bleasdale.

• Jennie George has announced she will retire at the next election, opening up a preselection contest in her seat of Throsby. A factional deal in place since 1997 has given Throsby to the hard Left and Fowler to the Right; Alex Arnold of the Illawarra Mercury reports the Left has everything in place to deliver the seat to Stephen Jones of the Community and Public Sector Union. The Mercury’s Brett Cox reports “no love lost between factions over the issue, with the Left accusing the Right of a behind the scenes campaign to oust Ms George and discredit Mr Jones’ links to the region”. Local Australian Workers Union branch secretary Andy Gillespie has labelled the Right dissidents “hypocrites”, as they had acquiesced in the imposition Lylea McMahon in the state seat of Shellharbour.

• The Liberal preselection for Bennelong looms as a contest between former tennis star John Alexander and Mark Chan, a 25-year-old manager for GE Capital whose Chinese background is being sold as an asset in the seat. Imre Salusinszky of The Australian reports the party has brought the preselection process forward so it can capitalise on Alexander’s exposure over summer as a tennis commentator. This would seem to suggest he is considered the front-runner.

• Saffron Howden of the Northern Star reports Pottsville pharmacist Tania Murdock is the “likely Nationals candidate” for Richmond. Tweed councillor Joan van Lieshout is considered a likely Liberal candidate.

• After a state and federal political career stretching back to 1965, Tasmanian Liberal MP Michael Hodgman has announced he will not contest the March state election due to ill health. Despite being 71 and suffering emphysema, Hodgman had remained on the six-person Liberal line-up for Denison when it was finalised last month. The party will now have to find a replacement candidate, and enter the election without a sitting member in the division. Among those who missed out at preselection was Hobart alderman and regular independent candidate Marti Zucco.

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.

2,146 thoughts on “Morgan: 56.5-43.5”

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  1. Boer @ 85
    a friend of mine recently lost all her hair; upon investigation, she had arsenic poisoning from her wellwater. (50% of the population up here is not on town water).
    Early Australian forensic history is full of murder cases where it was discovered (fortunately for the accused) that the death was due to drinking contaminated well water (usually strychnine leaching from the bricks lining the well).

  2. Where did you see that about Warren Mundine?

    Sorry, it’s not what I have heard it is what I haven’t been hearing. There is no mention of him when before the last election he was consider a possible candidate for Fowler.

  4. Rationalisation of resources gets very, very ugly very, very quickly. So my point in all of this is we need to start to do our share in terms of habitating the population of the world, and making the necessary changes that will sustain more people in this country, and suffer a small hit on living standards OR there will be a point in time where those without will try and take it from us, and keep trying until they have it or we can no longer enjoy it.

  5. Diog:

    I’ve only just worked out that Christian Science is completely different to Scientology and I’m keen to learn more about Scientology as a cult-religion but I’m struggling.

    Scientology is for people who can’t get into the Masons. :))

    Actually, in ‘the West’ we haven’t begun to develop strange cults (mostly based on tax dodging) to the level seen in Japan (particularly) and Thailand. I’ve heard an estimate that almost 15% of Japan’s potential tax revenue base is now lost through the proliferation of “new religions, personality cults and dubious religious societies set up as tax dodges.

  7. It’s going to expire shortly…

    The School Chaplain funding was only for 3 years because when it was introduced by the Rabble that is all it was funded for. It is going to expire becuase the Rabble did not make it permanent.

  11. On the scientology thing:

    The constitution does indeed prevent the commonwealth from making laws that restrict the freedom of religions. The states are free to make whatever laws they like but religions as a whole are generally too powerful for this to occur. The obvious example is that religions have certain exemptions from anti-discrimination legislation. Hence the recent debate and rollover by Brumby in Victioria. Oddly, the commonwealth is quite willing to make laws that assist religions in their freedom (e.g. tax breaks) even though they don’t have to. Another little knowm but very important aspect of the freedoms enjoyed by religions is freedom from IR laws, including OH&S, in relation to their clergy. In 1911 the privy council ruled against a clergyman who injured himself, using the argument that he was employed by God, not by his denomination and that he was part of a ‘consensual compact’ rather than a legal arrangement. This pricinple applies in all ex-british colonies, including the USA. This routinely strips ex clergy of retirement benefits if they resign rather than retire. If this seems as bizarre to you as it does to me, the consensual compact rule is what allows clubs to pay presidents an honoraium and was also the reason that ex NSW Govt Minister was unable to sue the Government.

  12. Rewi

    Not enough clean water to go round+poverty/maldistribution of wealth=childhood diorrhea=dead children.

    I am not sure, but I would be surprised if the figures are, in absolute terms, and on a global basis, improving.

    The Club of Rome was right, eventually. And it is water that is the scarce resource that the world’s over-population is butting up against.

    There is a huge sleeper here about which there is a fair bit of denial. Well over 1 billion people around the world depend on summer meltwater from glaciers. They have been getting plenty in the last 15 years or so because of accelerated melting of glaciers.

    So, at the moment, the problems are minor: raised water tables, occasional floods as glacial lakes are released in flash floods and so on. The other problem is that associated populations are growing. Plenty of water, actually more than there used to be, right?

    When the glaciers are gone (and they are going) there will no longer be summer melt water. An awful lot of irrigation depends on this meltwater.

    Summer heat+irrigation water=high productivity

    . So, when the meltwater stops, there will be food shortages, there will be water shortages, there will be increases in poverty and disease. And there will be increases in hunger and there will be increases in the number of children dying from fairly simple childhood diseases. It is all fairly predictable.

    But please, do not mention the pressure of too many people as having anything to do with this. This proposition does not compute with ultra-nationalists, ideologues, religious zealots and simple economic growth dunderheads.

  14. The other famous Hakka was Deng “rich is glorious” Xiao Ping.

    You are broadening my horizons amigo, I had a read about him and found a nice photo of Gough and Margaret with him 🙂

  16. Vera@90:

    You want photos 😉

    Thanks Vera – though not quite what the world was after, methinks!

    But that aside, I think it is great that two people as far apart as those two, both generationally, politically and every other way you can think of, can get to the point where they not only respect each other, they actually like each other.

    Does me heart good.

    Last one I remember, though PBers may have others, was the friendship between Jim Killen and Fred Daly.

  17. Mr Abbott has refused to comment today.

    Because Senator (Numbers Man) Minchin told him not to. The days of Turnbull and Bishop are nearing the end. Then it will be Abbott keeping his eye on Hockey for the next 3 years.

  21. Boerwar, you’re in fine form this afternoon. 😀

    And so am I on a certain By-Election thread 🙂 And beyond. 🙂

    The Fecal matter will soon hit the cooling devce hopefully :-p)

  22. Boer @ 111
    the interesting question is where all this water will end up – and is one of the arguments for a wetter future under climate change!
    This water has been held in glaciers and ice shelves for centuries in some cases. Now it’s being released. This actually means more available water.
    A lot of it will be responsible for sea level rises, but that actually means a larger water surface and more evaporation.
    More ‘free’ water and more evaporation should mean more rain – so who’s going to get it?
    Anyone know?

  23. Let’s see. Abbott challenges Turnbull before the ETS goes to the Senate. Succeeds. Turnbull knows he will never have the numbers and racks off. The AGW believers in the Liberal Party do a Minchin/Bernardi/Mason etc, refuse to give Abbott any respect, give vent to a bit of public spleen about AGW and the Deniers, and cross the floor and the ETS is passed.

    Abbott leads a Party that has split clear down the middle to the next election. He himself has demonstrated a doltish understanding of the issues and a tendency to change his mind in quite fundamental ways. The electorate duly slaughters the Libs.

    OK, if that is Plan A by Minchin and Abbott and the deniers, what is Plan B?

  24. The constitution does indeed prevent the commonwealth from making laws that restrict the freedom of religions.

    But does it make it unconstitutional to tax religions? I suspect that if JUST Scientology had its tax free status revoked that would be unconstitutional, but I don’t think it would be unconstitutional if ALL religious organisations were taxed in the same way.

  25. Cent@82:

    don@ 72 but they have a shortage of food, shelter, health and everything else necessary to sustain life, can you join the dots?

    So, Cent, you are going to open the doors to the entire Indian subcontinent, let ’em all come? Good luck getting that through parliament.

    Politics is the art of the possible. That’s not possible.

  28. zoomster

    Yeh. Good question.

    1. Regardless of how much additional rainfall there is, its distribution will change.
    2. In some cases it will add to too much rainfall.
    3. In other cases it will make a thousand flowers bloom in the desert.
    4. As more and more energy enters the system, the rainfall patterns will not stabilize but will continue to change.
    5. We have no idea of how rapidly the rainfall patterns will shift.
    6. However, if the rainfall reductions in the MDB and the increases in Australia’s North-west rainfall are anything to go by, it is going to be extremely difficult to generate the appropriate infrastructural responses in real time.

  31. Zoomster
    My understanding is that the additional water will be in the places that already get water, so mostly in the tropics and cool temperate zones.

    Overall you can imagaine it as the Earth’s climate zones expanding towards the poles (and getting wider), with the polar climate zone shrinking.

    the parts of Australia to get wetter will be the far north, the south will get drier.

  32. Boerwar

    You summed it up pretty well. The Libs have been split down the middle since they were demoted to opposition.

    They are now fighting about the spoils of defeat. They all realise that winning the next election is impossible (miracles excepted). It is about who gets to be driver of the Liberal Bus and who becomes a casualty.

  33. Actually, I was surprised to find that in some parts of the tropical north, like the Kimberley, the tool on that climatechangeinaustralia site predicts not that rainfall will increase, but that it will decrease by less than in the south of the country.

  34. Boerwar – I agree about the 50mill but as Scorpio has pointed out previously the 35mill is the rate of increase which will occur naturally in line with the past 60 odd years.

    We need to plan carefully for any increase. Rudd and Tanner should set us some kind of body to look at this and then put it to the people. Shall we cut back on immigration and only allow the normal birth rate increase or not.

    And they should also take a lesson out of South Australia’s Salisbury wetlands program for recycling water. It is absolutely brilliant. Have a look at it and let’s know what you think.

  35. Rewi

    I think there was some scientific work done on why the rainfall trends in the Kimberly had increased when, model-wise, they were supposed to decrease. There was a view that smoke particulates from India and Indonesia were furnishing the nuclei for the formation of droplets and that this had led to an increase in rainfall in the North-west of Australia. Sorry, I have no citations or links.

  36. Z@122:

    A lot of it will be responsible for sea level rises, but that actually means a larger water surface and more evaporation.

    The increased water surface would be negligible, unless the egg really hits the fan with water level rises. Then we will have more important things to worry about, like moving millions of people to higher ground.

    What is important is the increase in the temperature of the oceans. This will definitely increase the evaporation rate, and will result in more rain somewhere. But as Boerwar says, nobody really knows where or how much for certain.

    I’ve read that the climate zones in Oz will migrate southwards. This means that the southern strip of Oz that gets a mediterranean climate with winter rainfall may well miss out on that rainfall.

    The northern, dry part of Oz would thus become more like the monsoonal areas of the top of the Northern Territory.

    That’s the speculation, the reality will become apparent in good time.

  37. Vera – Sadly we had to send a very aged one to Moo Cow Heaven today. So stay well in that heat. It’s actually quite nice here with a breeze down the valley.

  38. BH

    1. I agree strongly that the policy issues are very difficult, challenging and delicate. This means that the Government has to start by putting together a proper population policy process. It has done nothing of the sort because Rudd and Tanner do not want to. An extra 13 million is fine by them. Dunderheads.

    2. Do you have a link on the wetlands?

  39. The only way the world will be able to cope with the water stress, from my understanding, is by embracing water recycling.
    It’s certainly what we should have done here in Perth as it’s cheaper than desal, you get more water, and we have giant aquifers that we can store it in.

  40. Now that I’ve started talking about diarrhea I can’t, much like the disease, stop.

    The Australian spokesperson featured in the Australia Network story was from the somewhat prosaically named Australia Toilet Organisation, which I now see is part of the World Toilet Organization.

    http://www.worldtoilet.org/members3.asp

    Any thoughts on a more exciting name?

    I was considering ‘Stop the Trots’, but maybe that’s a little too political.

  41. Zoomster 1665/1666 from the previously thread

    I appreciate where you are coming from in regards to the massive fires that have burnt though the Alpine country, basically the whole High country has suffered its worst fire seasons since those of Black Friday.

    In some ways Black Saturday was worst than Black Friday for example some of the fires that in 1939 burnt though Kinglake and the Yarra Ranges actually had been burning for up to a month.

    What happen on Black Friday was in someway similar to Ash Wednesday and Black Thursday in that Fire covered a large area extremely quickly.

    In my comment to Vera, I was not dismissing climate change as a threat to see increased bushfire behaviour which in itself will create problems for while the bush loves fire it needs a period of time in between being burnt out.

    Otherwise the Mountain Ash trees will die off.

    As someone who supports the ETS, i am include to question not the impact of climate change but question the use of what really is a common event in Victoria to be used for political purposes.

    In common i am referring to the tragic reality that Black Saturday was about the sixth time Kinglake has suffered lost of life in a bushfire.

  42. Astro you are spot on, we must be more sustainable with our water. Heard that dill Anna Bligh last night advocating more desalination plants. Gee they have made a mess of the Mary Valley project fancy buying land before Federal Government ticks the project, talk about arrogance…
    I personally think the projections are to conservative. I think the temperature increases will be higher, because climate change will be more rapid then we think.
    Climate scientists have got the arctic melt incorrect by some eighty years. Their projections on its melting it faster and faster…
    Here in Victoria we have had some significant hot weather of late and records keep tumbling, eventually i think we will have temperatures over 50 in the next five years. Port Augusta was forecast to have 47 two days ago.
    The weather i think is becoming dangerous and unpredictable.. It is only a matter of time when our power systems will crumble as a result hence the heat will affect their operation and imagine when that happens the chaos that will result..

  43. Reminds me of someone’s suggestion that we should have a ‘brown ribbon day’ for bowel cancer.

    A yellowy brown one for —— ?

  44. Dio – How do we know they don’t have a plan. May be going to take it to the election. They never show all their cards at once. But the debate has started and that’s good.

    I’m still on dialup for a couple of weeks so it takes me ages to find anything.

    I’ve checked google and there are a number of sites
    cweb.salisbury.sa.gov.au
    http://www.aila.org.au/projects/SA/paddocks/docs/wetlandspaper.pdf

    A couple of retired friends are volunteer guides for the wetlands and they have thousands of people trekking through each year. It has turned the awful old parts of Salisbury into a very green and interesting area. Have a look at Mawson Lakes – all built on recycled water from the wetlands.

  45. mex:

    Otherwise the Mountain Ash trees will die off.

    It did happen once, on the Black Spur. The trees were killed by the 1927 (?) fires and the seedlings burnt out by the 1939 ones. These seedlings were too young leave viable seed behind them.

    The whole of the present BS (alas, burnt again in 2009…I drove through there about two hours before the fire hit, foolish me) is basically one big plantation, as it was replanted by hand.

    This suggests, though, very strongly, that mountain ash forests are not adapted to fire events even 12 years apart. So fire events which are more regular than this may well see the extinction of this species (and I can’t even bear typing that).

  46. To think that after all the hot weather we are having and out of season heat in November and the Liberals are still sceptics.
    What planet do these dills live on?
    Nonetheless Labors’ plan is a sceptics plan which will do nothing about the problem.

  47. No shortage of water here – everything is lush and green and we are just about to have our 3rd electrical storm this week. They don’t last long but they are a damn nuisance to computers. I’ll have to enjoy the rest of the comments tomorrow. Cheers.

  48. The AS accommodation is the lead story again on Their ABC PM.

    The women and children are behind bars. Yes, they are, but behind bars on windows.

    The latest estimate is that there are 80m (of 240m) Indonesians live on widely used benchmark of $1 a day. This is real poverty. Anybody who has been to Indonesia and has visited the poor “kampung” where these people live would know the conditions of the “housing”. No running water, no sewerage, no solid wall, tin shacks, no floor (dirt), no power (if power, probably stolen from the grid).

    Income? No guarantee of the $1 income per day. These people are the real prisoners, they are the prisoners of poverty.

    Come on, give me a break. At least these AS live under a solid roof and wall, well fed and with the prospect of coming to Australia.

    I am sick and tired of the MSM using these AS people to make a political point whereas they are in a much better situation than the 80m wong cilik (little people) of Indonesia.

  49. Come on, give me a break. At least these AS live under a solid roof and wall, well fed and with the prospect of coming to Australia.

    Ahh, how the standards of CLLRs get lowered…

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