Morgan: 58.5-41.5

Hard to say what to make of a poll conducted last weekend in the present fluid circumstances, but the latest Morgan face-to-face poll suggests the Oceanic Viking issue was washing out of the system even before the Liberal Party went into its present meltdown. Labor is up three points on the primary vote to 48 per cent while the Coalition is down one to 35.5 per cent. The Greens are steady on 9 per cent; most of the balance comes from Family First, which has corrected from 3 per cent to 1.5 per cent after an aberrant result last week. Labor’s lead on two-party preferred is up from 56.5-43.5 to 58.5-41.5. Elsewhere:

• Antony Green’s blog has been a hive of activity recently. Of particular interest is his latest post, in which he departs his comfort zone to assert we can expect a by-election in Wentworth if the Liberal leadership saga plays out as presently expected. Also featured is an epic account of the bureaucratic nightmare involved in the enrolment of young voters, apropos the NSW government’s plans to introduce automatic enrolment.

• Peter Kennedy of the ABC reports the resurgent WA Nationals have chosen John McCourt to head their Senate ticket. The party made a big fanfare of its Senate hopes at its state conference earlier this year, promising a campaign heavily funded by unpleasant Queensland mining billionaire Clive Palmer.

• The Advertiser tells us it has seen internal party polling (we are not told which party’s) which shows the Liberals were building a head of steam even before the past week’s unpleasantness. The Liberal primary vote across selected marginal seats (again we are not told which ones, which makes the figures hard to read) is said to have been 39 per cent to Labor’s 31 per cent (the undecided were presumably not distributed), with the Liberals leading 52-48 on two-party preferred.

• Jeff Whalley of the Geelong Advertiser reports Kurt Reiter, managing director of IT consultancy Digital Quay, has been preselected to run against Labor’s Lisa Neville in the state seat of Bellarine.

• Nino Bucci of the Bendigo Advertiser reports Anita Donlon, founder of the “Independent Musos Network” (can’t say I’ve met too many Liberal-voting “independent musos” in my time), and Michael Langdon, former Australian Technical college principal, are jockeying for Liberal preselection in Bendigo West and Bendigo East respectively. An announcement will be made next week.

• Western Australia’s Willagee state by-election, held to replace former Premier Alan Carpenter, will be held tomorrow. Notwithstanding that these are not the happiest of times for state Labor, their candidate Peter Tinley should have no trouble seeing off a Green, an ex-Green independent and the Christian Democratic Party. I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch to say the most interesting thing about the by-election has been the Poll Bludger comments thread. Those wishing to discuss the by-election are invited to do so there; live coverage will as always be available here from the close of polling booths tomorrow.

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.

2,749 comments on “Morgan: 58.5-41.5”

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  2. Individual liberty is usually code for appeal to base selfishness. The Americans are fond of the word “freedom”.. which is much the same thing.

  3. Tonight’s game: What will be Kerry O’Brien’s first question to New Liberal leader Joe Hockey on Tuesday night?
    “How does it feel to have Nick Minchin pulling your strings”?

  5. [I’ve recently eaten so I think i’ll bookmark it for a later read]

    A wise precaution

    [By the way, PB gang, the last thread — weighing in at 4,201 comments — was an all-time record]

    Chewin’ up the Crikey bandwidth, that’s us 😉

  6. [Hockey with still living ETS will be the worst outcome from precisely who?]

    If the result is Hockey with a blocked ETS then it is the worst result for the Liberal Party and Australia.

    Rudd and Gillard and Co will be landing king hits on Hockey morning noon and night with the ETS not passed.

  7. [It is the right of every Liberal MP to vote how they want. It might not be a good position to be in, but it’s not a contradictory position to be in.]
    LOL! Downer effectively backs Turnbull for trying to modernise the party, but then towards the end says the CPRS shouldn’t be past until after Copenhagen.

    Those points are contradictory because Turnbull has repeatedly staked his leadership on passing the CPRS ASAP, and refers to delaying it further as a form of denial.

    I’m sorry if that is too complicated to understand, that is as easy as I can make it.

  8. [I don’t know if going to lunch at Wollstonecraft counts, but driving around the block 2 or 3 times as the sloppy one did may. Boy does that look graet on his CV !]

    My sources tell me that it was Mrs Howard, busy hiding the food – “Send him ’round again John, I can’t find a secure place for this caramel tart.”

    Still, Sloppy must have found most of it – he was there for two hours. The look on the rodent’s face as Sloppy jelly-wobbled down the stairs in that photograph said it all – the look of a pensioner whose adult kids have just been around and eaten out the fridge!!

  10. [Your point? It is the right of every Liberal MP to vote how they want. It might not be a good position to be in, but it’s not a contradictory position to be in.]

    The Liberal party is a walking contradiction, so that move may just eventuate…

  11. [Downer effectively backs Turnbull for trying to modernise the party, but then towards the end says the CPRS shouldn’t be past until after Copenhagen.

    Those points are contradictory because Turnbull has repeatedly staked his leadership on passing the CPRS ASAP, and refers to delaying it further as a form of denial.

    I’m sorry if that is too complicated to understand, that is as easy as I can make it.]

    Turnbull staked his leadership on it. Dolly didn’t. Dolly appears to back Turnbull but not the way he’s handling the CPRS. This is actually the view of many in the party.

  12. [ daGusface @jdub Thx for the heads up re Pollbludger. Woohoo still No1 for political commentary eat your heart out hearteaters in the MSM #split #spill]

    This is for everyone here

    🙂

  18. Thomas @2603.. if Hockey steps up as leader with a promise to drop the ETS, Turnbull will run against him. You simply then have to look at the selfish best interest of each MP to figure out that Turnbull would probably win that vote.

  20. And doesn’t this statement confirm that the Liberals actions in the Senate are a deliberate failure to pass. Their motive is clearly stated. Thus the GG shouldn’t have any difficulty in assessing that any delay of the bill was deliberate for the purposes of it not being voted on.

    [ Rebel Liberal senators are considering thwarting Malcolm Turnbull’s demand for an emissions trading vote on Monday, in what threatens to be another blow to the besieged opposition leader.

    Former Howard minister Kevin Andrews says senators will do whatever is necessary to delay a vote on the government’s emissions trading scheme (ETS) until after Copenhagen.

    Liberal senators will meet early on Monday morning to discuss whether to continue filibustering the debate, he said.

    “We should delay it and if that means talking it out, that means talking it out,” he told Network Ten on Sunday.

    http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/rebel-liberals-toying-with-delays-on-ets-20091129-jyg0.html%5D

  22. [Thomas @2603.. if Hockey steps up as leader with a promise to drop the ETS, Turnbull will run against him. You simply then have to look at the selfish best interest of each MP to figure out that Turnbull would probably win that vote.]

    The part of the bargain is stop the right from undermining the party because Turnbull is at the helm. The trade off is Turnbull’s head in exchange for passing the ETS and shutting up thereafter.

  26. [I think we might ease up on the fattism, bludgers. There are plenty of other things to get stuck into Hockey over.]
    Exhibit A would be that hilarious speech he made during the debate over email-gate:
    http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansardr%2F2009-06-22%2F0009%22

    It starts of poorly, and just gets worse:
    [Mr Speaker, I should inform the House of a news report on the ABC Broadcasting site which is headlined, ‘Australian Federal Police descend on Grech’s house’, and states:

    Australian Federal Police have executed a search warrant at the house of the Treasury official at the centre of the OzCar affair.

    The report goes on to say the ‘police are now interviewing Mr Grech about the email which appears to have been concocted inside the Treasury Department.’ It also states:

    Mr Grech told the inquiry on Friday that his recollection was that a staffer of the Prime Minister sent him an email about Mr Grant …

    He also told the inquiry that Treasury officials gave him the impression that Mr Grant “wasn’t your average constituent”.

    So, an email does exist, according to this report. The Prime Minister said there was no email, and yet evidence today from a Federal Police investigation suggests that an email—]

  27. [I think we might ease up on the fattism, bludgers. There are plenty of other things to get stuck into Hockey over.]

    Quite right Adam, I do tend to be a bit Daily Telegraph as far as my political sophistication goes. Though I notice The OO is featuring a large colour photo of People Skills in red budgie smugglers tomorrow. Sort of a reverse fatism? Or a sledge-hammer subtle OO comment on Hockey’s weight and fitness versus the OO pin-up boy’s weight and fitness?

  30. Thomas.. then it boils down to what the real motivation is.. is it

    a) To block any action on climate change – climate denialists
    b) To steer the LP to the right – even if that means wiping out its marginals
    c) To punish Turnbull for his leadership.

    My feeling is its hard to tell between a) and b) but there are some of both. And while some might bitch at Turnbull himself I think its more his policy they hate.

    The easy test is if Turnbull offers to step down if the Senators offer to abstain. That will be the test of whether its a) or c)

  33. I think installing Dutton as deputy is ridiculous. He will have to spend all of the election campaign in QLD.

    Compare that to Labor having Gillard who is as good if not better than Rudd at getting Labor’s message across.

  34. [I think we might ease up on the fattism, bludgers. There are plenty of other things to get stuck into Hockey over.]

    Joe’s BIG announcements, lead to a sense of FATTENING the calf.

    Of course in the BIG picture, his GARGANTUAN contribution are like cutting the FAT off the political bone.

    An overly LARGE view would seem to contend that his BLOATED ego does not equal his less than OBESE intellect.

    But of course we deal with much WEIGHTy matters,

  35. Ah so this is what Howard said:
    [Howard offered Hockey a solution. The Howard government had indeed proposed a cap and trade emissions scheme, but it had always been contingent on Australia not losing its competitive advantage and had never been proposed to go ahead before Australia knew what the rest of the world was doing. Deferring it was rationally the long-stated Liberal stance.]
    Which was mentioned in Dolly Downer’s article too:
    [The Howard government favoured an emissions trading scheme, it is true, but it did have one central qualification. That was, the scheme would only be introduced if the Americans, the Europeans, the Japanese and a handful of other rich countries were prepared to make a similar contribution to addressing climate change.]
    http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,26418173-2682,00.html

  36. [Joe’s BIG announcements, lead to a sense of FATTENING the calf.

    Of course in the BIG picture, his GARGANTUAN contribution are like cutting the FAT off the political bone.

    An overly LARGE view would seem to contend that his BLOATED ego does not equal his less than OBESE intellect.

    But of course we deal with much WEIGHTy matters,]

    Not to mention Joe has a more than ample frame 🙂

  40. I think the right have a passionate hatred of the ETS but must see that it is inevitable one way or another. No escaping it. And that to keep it alive is only to inflict fatal wounds on themselves.

    But rational behaviour and thinking has been scarce among them of late.

    I think they might be happy to get rid of Turnbull because of his style, because he is not of the true Liberal family and because he is to left for them. Hockey would be a fill in candidate that would get the numbers but weak and more easily coerced, he is also a genuine part of the Liberal family and knows the culture.

  42. Anyone who has really considered going into politics when they had very young children is probably, like me, feeling a bit sorry for Joe, his wife and his kids. But then again he probably won’t be leader for long once Minchin et al realise that he is not a true “convert”.

  43. So the question really is.. are there enough rational self maximisers left in the LP to realise it should pass the ETS and then bludgeon its leader over the holiday.

  44. [It will be so nice for Bolt to be shown as a fraud.]
    I suspect that even if, say, next year is the hottest on record, he will just say the data is flawed. If the year following that is hotter, he will just dismiss it by saying the data is flawed.

    Repeat indefinitely.

  45. [AGW is an obvious fraud. The ETS is an obvious scam. I feel, if this legislation passes, I will stop blogging.]

    Rupert must have told him that if he can’t stop the ETS, then he will have his PC taken off him!;-)

    Should have had it taken off him years ago!

  47. Thomas.. my point still remains. If Hockey is seen to fall into the denialist camp then the cooler heads in the LP won’t vote for him as leader.

  48. Yes cud chewer 2636 , but I think the real irony is that if Howard had narrowly won in 2007 he would have passed an ETS just to get it “off the table” for the next election. I think he had a bit more – shall we say – “rat cunning” than Minchin, Abetz and Abbott.

  50. [ Howard offered Hockey a solution. The Howard government had indeed proposed a cap and trade emissions scheme, but it had always been contingent on Australia not losing its competitive advantage and had never been proposed to go ahead before Australia knew what the rest of the world was doing. Deferring it was rationally the long-stated Liberal stance.

    Which was mentioned in Dolly Downer’s article too:

    The Howard government favoured an emissions trading scheme, it is true, but it did have one central qualification. That was, the scheme would only be introduced if the Americans, the Europeans, the Japanese and a handful of other rich countries were prepared to make a similar contribution to addressing climate change. ]

    Ahh Mi savvy. Same same before. Non Core Promise ! Em e come up again ?

    Tru Pela ?

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