The first opinion poll of the Tony Abbott era has turned up a surprise: Labor’s two-party lead is a modest 53-47, and the Coalition is in front on the primary vote 43 per cent to 41 per cent. However, there are all sorts of reasons to treat this with caution. The poll is a Roy Morgan mid-week phone poll, which have a rather erratic record, and the sample was a very modest 597 respondents. The normal weekly face-to-face poll, conducted last weekend while Malcolm Turnbull was leader but considered unlikely to remain so for long, had Labor’s two-party lead steady at 58.5-41.5. Labor was down a point on the primary vote to 47 per cent, the Coalition was down half a point to 35 per cent and the Greens were up half to 9.5 per cent.
The phone poll has also produced questions on preferred Labor and Liberal leaders, which find Kevin Rudd coming down off previous highs and Tony Abbott enjoying a new-found legitimacy that hasn’t been quite enough for him to overhaul Joe Hockey. Rudd also has a leads as better prime minister of 60-25 over Abbott, 55-31 over Hockey and 64-25 over Turnbull. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Abbott did not perform notably worse among women than men.
Couple of other things:
• The Wentworth Courier reports Steven Lewis, Slater & Gordon lawyer, anti-high rise activist and members of the Jewish Board of Deputies, will contest Labor preselection in Wentworth. Former Australian Medical Association president Kerryn Phelps has been mentioned as a contender in the past, but declined to comment when approached by the Courier. The Australian reports barrister Mark Speakman, University of NSW deputy chancellor Gabrielle Upton and “most of the losers from the Bradfield preselection” would be in the running to succeed Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal member. The Courier throws Arthur Sinodinos into the mix. Speakman, Upton and Sinodinos have all been mentioned as possible successors to outgoing former state leader Peter Debnam in the corresponding state seat of Vaucluse.
• It was reported on Wednesday that NSW Treasurer Eric Roozendaal might seek to assume the premiership by entering the lower house as member for Wollongong, whose sitting member Noreen Hay would then take his place in the upper house. This plan has presumably been overtaken by events, at least in the short term.
• The Liberals are pressuring Labor to drop Wanneroo mayor Jon Kelly as the candidate-presumptive for the marginal Perth seat of Cowan after a Corruption and Crime Commission report spoke of “dealings” between Kelly and Brian Burke, without making adverse findings against him. Kelly has long been associated with the Burke-linked “old Right” faction, and ran as an independent against Margaret Quirk in the state seat of Girrawheen following the split that created the latter’s “new Right” faction.
Basically the way that he has used points to weave a narrative that is Lib positive and Labor negative and by the use of misrepresentations and untruths!
[to oppose it is to deny climate change and vote for inaction.]
Does that really apply to at least half the Libs and the Greens/Mr X?
[* The government’s campaign has been directed against Liberal Party climate change deniers rather than explaining the ETS.]
Self explanatory!
[* The Coalition has offered no alternative.]
Didn’t the Libs have a policy under Howard? Didn’t Turnbull negotiate amendments to pass it? Hasn’t Abbott just said they have an alternate plan?
[* The breaking of the bipartisan approach to the ETS has galvanised public attention.]
Galvanised media attention! Most of the community couldn’t give a stuff!
[lThe CPRS is a scheme nobody wants: Liberals, Nationals, Greens, independents and even Labor.]
What in the blazes has Labor been doing since the election trying to get an ETS through if they didn’t want one in the first place!
[* The so-called offer of concessions for a “week only” were always meant to be part of the permanent CPRS and will last for a year; the government will not hold an early double-dissolution election on the CPRS.]
He woudn’t have a clue!
[* The government’s last hope is to once again split the Liberals and destroy a third opposition leader over climate change.]
How in the hell would he know this! It’s no different to his reading of polls, just spin and twisting of reality to fit his Lib centric version!
This is after all coming from a member of the Lib cheer squad!
[Exactly half of those surveyed by Galaxy Research said Mr Rudd had the best approach to the issue.
Just 27 per cent backed Mr Abbott, who has pledged not to introduce an emissions trading scheme, and 23 per cent were uncommitted.]
Cop that Tony
Kroger on why O’Barrell isn’t leading by a mile: “Polls go up and down… 3 or 4% here and there”
And yet you quoted the Federal Morgan poll earlier in the interview to defend Abbott!!! Having a shocker Michael 🙂
[Cop that Tony]
Of course that is exactly what Turnbull didn’t want, the Liberal party staking out a position completely at odds with voters.
Kroger is lost now cossie is out. He had a huge investment in costello.
[And yet you quoted the Federal Morgan poll earlier in the interview to defend Abbott!!! Having a shocker Michael ]
Kroger is hopeless. He never provides analysis, he just goes on there to campaign. I have no idea why they bother having him on.
Howes tipping the ALP to win in NSW now… but with a very wry grin on his face 😉
Howes nailed it. Perfect pitch and rhythm.
Stephen Long is matching Leigh with the blues as well as her baby blue. Love is in the air.
After predicting Australia would march in to recession, Long just can’t help himself and starts bagging out Carbon trading schemes. Doom and gloom is all he knows.
Out of state for a week. Can’t believe my timing that I’ll be missing Insiders, Age on Sunday et al on the day after the Higgins by election but hopefully will pick up some news on my crystal set in Tasmania. Good luck to those left of centre and may the force be with you.
Michael Wilbur-Ham
Posted Friday, December 4, 2009 at 10:48 pm | Permalink
scorpio,
I meant which of the bullet points you posted in post 123 do you think are spin?]
Crikey Mike, read 151 and then read it in context with the whole article!
It’s all anti-Labor pro-Liberal spin from the first word to the last!
It’s right up there with some of Shannahan’s best work! 😉
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/change-in-climate-as-rudd-starts-from-scratch/story-e6frg6zo-1225806764425
[But a majority of voters don’t want the Prime Minister to push his advantage by calling an early ETS poll.]
Does that mean they wouldn’t vote for Rudd if he did? I bet that question wasn’t asked.
Kroger said that Abbott is bringing Joyce back to the front bench, he has never been on the front bench in the sense that he has never been a shadow minister or minister, because he doesn’t want to be held to the Coalition line.
Kroger said the Liberals want to bring back secret union ballots. Well guess what, they were RETAINED by the Government in the Fair Work Act!
[But a majority of voters don’t want the Prime Minister to push his advantage by calling an early ETS poll.]
He won’t be going early anyway
SO@116:
[ How do birds use magnetic fields to navigate?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoreception%5D
Thanks SO, much appreciated. I started looking up an answer to Dio and found yours, which is better than what I had by that time found.
Hindsight is wonderful! Case in point, Fielding”s preferences.
Psephos’ boss has a few words on it! 😉
[The ALP could have snatched the blue-ribbon seat of Higgins from the Liberals if it ran a candidate in Saturday’s by-election, party insiders say.
With the opposition’s extraordinary about-face on climate change and ongoing ructions within the party, some in the ALP now regret not being in the race.
Saturday’s by-election in former treasurer Peter Costello’s safe Melbourne seat will now come down to a battle between the Liberals and the Greens.
With a seven per cent margin the Liberals are unlikely to lose.
But federal Labor MP Michael Danby said it was “folly” not running a candidate and ALP decision-makers knew and cared little about Victoria.
“If we’d stood a candidate we had a less than 50 per cent chance of winning, but I believe with the lucky circumstances of the last two weeks we could have won,” the MP for Melbourne Ports told AAP.
“What a prize Higgins would have been. Imagine, we would have won a former treasurer’s seat.”
A senior ALP source agreed.
“I personally think we had a strong chance given the margin’s only seven per cent and given the disarray in which the federal Liberal Party is in,” the source said.]
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/mp-raps-alp-for-avoiding-higgins-vote-20091204-kau2.html
Finns@138:
[Of the 100 potential jurors called up. Only 60 attended. Of this 60, only 10 was available for the trial, the rest of 50 was trying to get off one way or the other. i was one of the 10.]
I was called up once, and considered asking to be let off, but decided not to.
I was very glad I hadn’t when the judge made people trying to escape duty for trivial reasons tore strips off them. Boy he was good at it.
I wasn’t actually chosen.
Not long after, I read a story in the paper about someone, a naturalised migrant, who was called up, and said she would be proud to serve on a jury.
She said that where she was born, it was not an option.
Made me feel small just for thinking about getting an exemption.
The reality about Higgins is that Labour could have spent $300k on the bi election and and under current circumstances might have won or squeaked a small loss. Yet, even if they won in December, the next Fed election could be as close as February.
It’s not a seat that Labour will naturally hold.
Last federal election the Greens ran a candidate in EVERY lower house seat, and they did not expect to win any.
So I think voters have every right to feel let down when a major party does not stand for a by-election.
A bit late for this now. The issue of the e-mails has already been used by anti- GW representatives to try and hijack the Copenhagen summit as I posted on the last thread.
[A top UN panel is to probe claims that British scientists sought to suppress data backing climate change sceptics’ views, its head said ahead of the the landmark Copenhagen summit.
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the claims – which led a top expert to leave his post temporarily this week – were serious and needed to be investigated.
Professor Phil Jones has stood aside as head of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, after emails allegedly calling into question the scientific basis for climate change fears were leaked onto the internet.]
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/04/2762770.htm
MWH,
I’m sure all those regular Liberal supporters will be devastated.
[Howes nails Abbott
“the barry goldwater of oz politics”]
In your heart, you know he’s right.
david
the UK equivalent is john redwood
Part of today’s Age editorial reads:
[As commentators who savour the contradictions thrown up by politics rushed to point out, the Abbott strategy means that across the spectrum Australia’s parties are now committed to responding to climate change in ways that sit oddly with their ideological stances. On the left, the Greens want the uncompromising market mechanism of an emissions trading scheme unsullied by concessions to big polluters. Labor’s CPRS contains substantial concessions and compensation for precisely those polluters, to keep business onside as emissions trading begins. And now, the supposedly anti-socialist Liberal and National parties will shun pricing measures in favour of regulation as a means of changing behaviour.
No wonder Kelly O’Dwyer, who today seeks to replace her former employer Peter Costello as Liberal MHR for Higgins, ran a campaign in which climate policy rated all too few mentions, despite the fact that her highest-profile rival for the seat, Greens candidate Clive Hamilton, talked about little else. Ms O’Dwyer and Paul Fletcher, the Liberal candidate in today’s other byelection, in Brendan Nelson’s former seat of Bradfield, have been placed in unenviable positions by their party’s divisions over climate change. In normal circumstances, by tonight they would be comfortably installed as the latest inheritors of safe Liberal seats. But the circumstances are not normal, and Ms O’Dwyer, in particular, may run a close race.]
I think the above is a good commentary.
I would add to the above that I think the Greens approach is only “sits oddly with their ideological stance” if the Greens are thought of as a LEFT party.
In fact when you look at the Greens policies and input to parliament I think the Greens are usually what more CENTRE, and thus there is no ideological inconsistency.
177
The Greens are a Left-wing party. The economic policies of the Greens are left wing and so are most of the Greens members and voters. The Greens social policies are not generally associated with the right either.
Tom, ignore the populist labels and see what each party does, and things are not nearly that simple.
The Greens support higher taxes, more redistribution and regulation of the economy. This is left wing.
Another article on Higgins (from the SMH),
http://www.smh.com.au/national/voter-backlash-over-poll-pamphlet-deluge-20091204-kay3.html
I missed out on most of Kelly’s material as most of it was posted, and as I was the Green’s candidate last time, they deleted me from their mailing list.
[The Greens support higher taxes, more redistribution and regulation of the economy. This is left wing.]
But don’t support the massive give-aways of both Labor and Liberal, the regulatory solution to climate change of Abbott, and are sometimes the only economic conservatives in the senate 🙂
181
It consisted mainly of
local issues
private health insurance
stuff about her personal history
photos of her looking rather like a young Bronwyn Bishop.
Out of the eight states and territories, only SA and Tasmania remain where there has been no female Premier. Where is it likely to happen first?
[Last federal election the Greens ran a candidate in EVERY lower house seat, and they did not expect to win any.]
I doubt the Greens would have spent what Labor would be expected to spend on a campaign so I can understand the financial logic in the decision. Still, you can run a “no frills” campaign too.
Xanthippe also said four weeks ago that Labor should have entered a candidate, even if only someone low profile for experience. It is to keep faith with Labor supporters in the seat. I know from past experience it isn’t much fun to be stuck in a seat that is safe for a side you don’t like. Plus sometimes you get pleasant surprises, recalling Leonie Short(?) in Ryan a few years ago.
182
The Greens oppose Abbott`s idea mainly because he isn`t serious about doing anything like enough. Also regulation alone won`t work.
Tom, I got her latest booklet today from my neighbor. He had not opened it.
At least you can see how some of her very large campaign budget was spent!
And here is the video of Rudd launching ABC3 🙂
http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200912/r481602_2456436.asx
Low voter turnout, going to preferences, and an early Xmas if the greens get in. If the ASP have HTV’s their vote will be elevated 5%+, If the AD also have HTV’s this will appeal more to ALP voters but I have seen nothing from them.
On the other hand, not having read one single post on this thread, merely something I troubled myself to examine much earlier.
And only now have had the opportunity to post on.
The following is taken from the well known far rightist, Tom Switzer.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2651259.htm
If the link works. If not, I am sure you can find it. ABC unleashed.
“The Government boasts that the climate change bills represent the most radical and far-reaching reforms of a generation. This is undoubtedly true. But there are many unidentified devils in the detail of this immensely complex legislation, and it’s no wonder a survey of 400 business leaders of ETS-related industries has found a third have “no knowledge” of key components of the scheme”.
Clearly, Labor has failed to explain coherently and compellingly how its radical reform will affect our way of life and reduce global emissions when China and India are excluded from the post-Kyoto process.
So Turnbull would be well advised to call Labor’s bluff, oppose the legislation outright and highlight the ETS’s costly economic implications while proposing more effective ways of combating climate change.
The national interest, not to mention the Coalition’s own political interest, demands nothing less.
Tom Switzer is a climate change agnostic”
The wary may like to read the full article. Prophetic, in its way. It is dated August 09.
Australia did not get England group, bummer.
Australia gets Germany group
Australia (21) groups with Germany (6), Ghana (37) and Serbia (20) – not quite group of death.
Group of death: Brazil, S Korea, Ivory Coast and Portugal.
England got an easy group: USA. Algeria and Slonevia – This could be England’s World Cup.
[On the left, the Greens want the uncompromising market mechanism of an emissions trading scheme unsullied by concessions to big polluters. Labor’s CPRS contains substantial concessions and compensation for precisely those polluters, to keep business onside as emissions trading begins. And now, the supposedly anti-socialist Liberal and National parties will shun pricing measures in favour of regulation as a means of changing behaviour.]
Well, well, well:
On left – the Greens. On the right – The Liberals/Nats
Guess who is in the centre? Nice place to be.
Come on Finnigans. We just might get the dream game for Australian soccer; England vs Australia, and your predicting we will lose.
Fred, you could be right about a game between Aust Vs England. But the Group D is not bad for Aust because Germany & Serbia play similar to Australia’s style.
My prediction is the same result for Australia as in 2006, 1 win (ghana), 1 loss (germany) and 1 draw (serbia) and goal difference will decide who gets no: 2 to Germany.
Who is in the centre, Finnigan?
[Who is in the centre, Finnigan?]
Ah that “água de coco” – juicy, succulent, nutritious, refreshing, medicinal, more electrolytes and potassium than most sports drinks – is in the centre.
I’ve been trying to locate audio or video of BA Santamaria. I can recall as a young ‘un seeing him on B&W TV sprouting his Archbishop Mannix inspired bile. My recollection is that his diction bore a similarity to that of Erica Betz.
Can any PBer out there help me find him?
mmm, água de coco