Morgan phone poll: 53-47

I held off doing a post on yesterday’s unconvincing Morgan phone poll result in the hope they would give us a face-to-face poll this week, but either they’ve gone on Christmas break or are returning to their old pattern of combining results fortnightly. Yesterday’s effort was a phone poll from a sample of just 493 respondents, conducted on the back of a survey about climate change. The results were not unlike those of last week’s similarly dubious poll: Labor up a point to 42 per cent, the Coalition down 1.5 per cent to 41.5 per cent and the Greens down one to 9.5 per cent, with Labor’s two-party lead steady on 53-47.

Elsewhere:

• Phoebe Stewart of the ABC reports Palmerston deputy mayor Natasha Griggs has been preselected as the Country Liberal Party candidate for Darwin-based Solomon, defeating three other candidates including Darwin City Council alderman Garry Lambert and Tourism Top End head Tony Clementson. Bob Gosford of The Northern Myth further writes that Bess Price, described by the Northern Territory News as an “indigenous domestic violence campaigner”, has nominated for CLP preselection in the territory’s other electorate, Lingiari. Price has the backing of Alison Anderson, Labor-turned-independent member for Macdonnell, and says she has “always voted Labor” in the past.

• VexNews hears the NSW Liberals could dump Chris Spence as candidate for The Entrance early in the New Year. At issue is Spence’s comprehensive resume as a former One Nation activist: research officer to the party’s state upper house MP David Oldfield, federal candidate for Fraser in 1998, state candidate for Barwon in 2003, New South Wales state party secretary, national and state president of the youth wing “Youth Nation”, and ACT branch president and regional council chair.

• Samantha Maiden of The Australian reports possible scenarios for federal intervention into the NSW Labor Party include replacing secretary Matthew Thistlethwaite with an administrator answerable to the federal executive, and stripping Joe Tripodi and Eddie Obeid of their preselection (respectively for Fairfield and the upper house).

• Nick Minchin told ABC Television on Wednesday that it would be “healthy for democracy” if restrictions were placed on television election advertising to reduce the costs of campaigning.

• The Labor national executive has endorsed Rob Mitchell for a second try at McEwen, to be vacated at the next election by retiring Liberal Fran Bailey. The court ruling in Mitchell’s unsuccessful legal challenge against the 2007 result saw his margin of defeat increased from 12 to 27.

• Damien Madigan of the Blue Mountains Gazette reports the the state leadership change has inspired Labor’s national executive to delay its preselection decision for Macquarie, where Blue Mountains mayor Adam Searle is expected to be named successor to the retiring Bob Debus.

• Reader Sacha Blumen points me to a Wentworth Courier article from a month ago (see page 22) naming two potential Labor candidates for Wentworth – “Paddington veterinarian Barry Nielsen and Darlinghurst barrister Phillip Boulten” – in addition to Stephen Lewis, described in last week’s edition as a Slater & Gordon lawyer, anti-high rise activist and members of the Jewish Board of Deputies. Former Australian Medical Association president Kerryn Phelps has also been mentioned in the past. This week the Courier reports the Greens have endorsed Matthew Robertson, a Darlinghurst-based legal researcher for the Refugee Advice and Casework Service.

• Antony Green berates those of us who were “examining the entrails of the booth by booth results to try and divine some patterns” from Saturday’s by-elections, arguing such entrails are only interesting for what they tell us about “how Labor voters react to the Greens as a political party”. The conclusion is that “Labor voters in the ritzier parts of Bradfield seem more likely to view the Greens as a left-wing alternative to Labor than Labor voters in less affluent areas”. Antony has since conducted some entrail examination of his own to conclude that the resulting positive relationship between the two-party Liberal vote in 2007 and the Liberal swing at the by-election is unusual for urban electorates. My own post-mortem was published in Crikey on Monday.

• The NSW Nationals have announced the state seat of Tamworth will be the laboratory for its open primary experiment, in which the party’s candidate will be chosen by a vote open to every person enrolled in the electorate. The naturally conservative seat is held by independent Peter Draper, having been in independent hands for all but two years since Tony Windsor (now the federal member for New England) won it in 1991.

• Robert Taylor of The West Australian has written an action-packed column on Labor federal preselection matters in Western Australia. It commences thus:

On the surface, the WA Labor Party’s powerful state administrative committee looks to have a straightforward job next Monday when it meets to approve candidates in crucial seats for next year’s Federal election. In typical Labor fashion, three of the candidates for the most winnable Liberal seats of Swan, Cowan and Canning are unopposed, the backroom deals having already been done between the factional powerbrokers to obviate the need for a vote and all the inherent dangers that accompany them. In Durack, where there’s an outside chance of Labor rolling incumbent Barry Haase in the redrawn Kalgooorlie-based electorate, former State Geraldton Labor MP Shane Hill is also unopposed, but that’s because he was really the only one who wanted it badly enough. In Stirling, where Labor has a second to none chance of rolling incumbent Michael Keenan, something obviously went wrong because two people decided to nominate against the favourite Louise Durack, but an upset is highly unlikely.

So the administrative committee had very little to worry about until last Thursday when the Corruption and Crime Commission released its long-awaited report on goings-on at the City of Wanneroo, which handed a couple of misconduct findings to deputy mayor Sam Salpietro and fired a salvo across the bows of Wanneroo mayor Jon Kelly. The problem for Labor is that Mr Kelly is the party’s hope in the seat of Cowan, held by the Liberals Luke Simpkins with a thin 2.4 per cent margin. Labor sees a combination of the local mayor and Kevin Rudd as an irresistible combination in Cowan and had all but pencilled in the seat as a win before last week’s report. The CCC made it clear that in its opinion Mr Kelly was prepared to curry favour with former premier-turned-lobbyist Brian Burke in order to further his own political ambitions. Mr Kelly argued both at the commission and since the report came out that he did everything possible to distance himself from Mr Burke, but put bluntly the CCC just didn’t believe him – which must make the ALP’s administrative committee wonder whether the voters of Cowan will either.

• Dennis Shanahan of The Australian has been in touch to point out an error in last week’s Newspoll post, which stated both Newspoll and the Nielsen poll were both conducted on the Friday and Saturday. Newspoll’s surveying in fact continued throughout Sunday, with The Australian releasing the result at the end of the day.

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.

1,043 comments on “Morgan phone poll: 53-47”

Comments Page 14 of 21
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  2. Psephos, there’s a beach with some significance in one of the novels but cannot remember which. The first himself indoors got custody of that part of the library, so can’t look it up. Pity about Nasser stuffing up the demographic, but they’ve been at it forever. Just listened to an interesting thing on The Spirit of Things, RN, on Hagar and Sarah, their relationships with each other, their significance to current day Jews, Arabs and Christians, the possibility that Hagar was actually a daughter of Pharoah and what that might have meant politically, i.e., marriages to forge or cement alliances.
    Hope you have a wonderful trip.

  4. Those black ants are probably Argentine ants Linepithema humile.

    The are not native to Australia and are pests of both people and native species of ants. The full scale of their destructiveness is poorly understood. In South Africa, for example, they have been involved in running off a species of native ant which formerly collected and buried native plant seeds. The seeds now remain on the surface and, when a fire arrives, voila, the seeds are destroyed. It is a wicked world out there.

    .50 cal machine guns are OK in the open, but in confined spaces, such as kitchens, a .22 pistol is recommended.

  5. [For the environmentaly friendy way to get rid of ants, try talcum powder on their tralis and around nest, works every time.]

    Talking about about ants. This is evolution and Darwin in my kitchen.

    For years and years, we have been using AntRid to get rid of the ants. They used to love it, swarmed around the honey flavoured liquid by the hundreds and then go away to die in ecstasy.

    In the last couple of years, I have noticed the Antrid has become less and less attractive to the ants. This summer it has finally been confirmed. The ants simply ignored the Antrid liquid and just walked around it.

    They have obviously learned that Antrid is poison and then passes it on to the subsequent generations to avoid it in their DNA.

  6. [ShowsOn
    Posted Sunday, December 13, 2009 at 7:15 pm | Permalink
    ….

    Also, this ignores the potential of breeder reactors to make fuel from Uranium 233. In other words, this is an argument base don assuming that reactor technology will stay the same for the next several decades.
    …]

    See don, you have to get the chant right; forget the facts.

  9. [ Also, this ignores the potential of breeder reactors to make fuel from Uranium 233. In other words, this is an argument base don assuming that reactor technology will stay the same for the next several decades.
    …

    See don, you have to get the chant right; forget the facts.]

    Breeder reactors work – fact. Reactor technology has the potential to improve – reasonable opinion.

  10. AGW-fight-wise, I feel like what I think many people might have felt during the phoney war.

    Everyone knows that the real thing is coming but there is an air of unreality about the peacefulness of it all right now. There is big, unfinished business; it will affect us all in a fundamental way, and no-one knows how it will all turn out.

  15. Boerwar, some of us laugh because there is nothing else to do in the face of the stupidity of, e.g., the Liberal Party, idiots gibbering about lefty conspiracies, Bolt, the more deliberately manipulative, and so on.
    The thing that gets me is what the hell do they think they’re going to do if the planet does a Venus.

  18. HSO

    you tell me:

    &imgrefurl=http://blogs.smh.com.au/travel/Venus_de_Milo.html&usg=__j2uZctheVbNo8UAkQR2jkhL7YvQ=&h=805&w=480&sz=84&hl=en&start=4&um=1&tbnid=GYooljelQc9GdM:&tbnh=143&tbnw=85&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dvenus%2Bde%2Bmilo%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1T4DAAU_en-GBAU292AU292%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1

  20. Frank @651.. nah.. teleporter is the way to go. Send the humans off to a new planet that they can’t stuff up, cos it’s already stuffed 🙂

  22. @669, true, but your last retort was pretty lame.. hey we’re not building stockpiles of nerve gas and that proves we should get to work and build em 🙂

  23. It’s Time
    Posted Sunday, December 13, 2009 at 7:47 pm | Permalink

    ….

    Breeder reactors work – fact. Reactor technology has the potential to improve – reasonable opinion.

    …]

    Fact: No commercial fast breeder reactors.
    Reasonable opinion: None expected before 2030.
    Fact: If it doesn’t happen Nuclear industry is finished.

    But hay, don’t let facts get in your way, continue the chant.

  26. HSO

    Two of my adult offspring, when faced with the solemnity of the real thing in the Louvre, created minor mayhem with V d M. One of them puckered his lips while the other jockeyed the camera around take snaps as the puckered lips lined up with various V d M pleasure spots in the background…

    merde

  28. [@669, true, but your last retort was pretty lame.. hey we’re not building stockpiles of nerve gas and that proves we should get to work and build em]
    Stop trolling.
    [Fact: No commercial fast breeder reactors.
    Reasonable opinion: None expected before 2030.
    Fact: If it doesn’t happen Nuclear industry is finished.]
    Well done for completely ignoring Thorium. Now everyone knows you don’t know anything about this issue.

  31. [Notable Breeder Reactors

    * Experimental Breeder Reactor I (U.S., decommissioned 1964, world’s first electricity-producing nuclear power plant)
    * BN-600 (Russia, end of life 2010)[12][13]
    * Clinch River Breeder Reactor (U.S., construction abandoned in 1982 because the US halted its spent-fuel reprocessing program and thus made breeders pointless)[14]
    * Monju (Japan, being brought online again after a serious sodium leak and fire in 1995)[15]
    * Superphénix (France, closed 1998)[16]
    * Phénix (France, operational since 1974, stopped its grid electricity production as of March 2009, prior to decomissioning)]

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

    That seems to be a longer list than that for solar thermal power stations.

  32. Ummmmmmmm

    The LHC when finished its work 2+yrs,will bring a whole new level of power and physics.

    Altho vehemently opposed to old nuclear,we may well be at the dawn of a new age in generation,storage and transmission.

    as you were

  33. [ShowsOn
    How close are we to having commercial thorium reactors?]
    Let’s see what India comes up with in a decade. They have a lot of Thorium but not much Uranium so they will probably figure it out first.

    Of course we are decades away from having GW scale renewable projects that can operate 24/7, same deal with carbon capture and storage.

  35. Adam, Master of Spin,
    You are right, my inapropriate wordolagy would never get me in to the spinning buisiness.

    Swollowing that dictionary, certainly qualifies you as a Hack of the highest order.

    When is your next reeducation class?.

  36. [That seems to be a longer list than that for solar thermal power stations.]
    And of course comparing to solar thermal isn’t fair on solar thermal, because we are decades away from a GW scale solar thermal plant.

  39. [*genuinely curious* why so few and why none, apparently, in the immediate pipeline?]
    Because there hasn’t been demand. With Governments around the world moving so slowly to put a price on carbon there has been no need for development in advanced nuclear power technologies.

  42. HSO
    I believe strongly in the Parental Cutoff. This is an invisible line the other side of which is inhabited by adult children. If they want to do a Safran, so, glug, be it.

  43. It just would not be sunday without a media swing at Rudd.

    From guess who ?

    Their ab frigging c of course.

    [PM’s office denies Rudd abused staff

    Government officials say they have no record of an incident involving Prime Minister Kevin Rudd verbally abusing his staff in the presence of a ComCar driver.

    A Sunday newspaper report says a Launceston-based driver for the Federal Government’s car pool service allegedly saw Mr Rudd direct a stream of expletives at his chief of staff and press secretary.
    It is claimed Mr Rudd, who was travelling in the front passenger seat, also threw a folder towards them after failing to find a document in the folder.

    The Prime Minister’s office has denied Mr Rudd abused his staff while in Launceston.
    A spokesman for the Prime Minister says the allegations are ridiculous and a gross exaggeration.

    He said the three men who were in the car occasionally exchange views in a robust manner, but are extremely close and work together respectfully and professionally.
    The finance department, which administers ComCar, says when the Prime Minister is in Tasmania he is driven by police.

    A spokeswoman says a hire car is provided for Mr Rudd’s staff but this is not driven by a ComCar driver.
    The department has also denied claims that Mr Rudd asked for a change of drivers when in South Australia because he was apparently unhappy with a driver’s performance.

    The Prime Minister has a history of losing his cool and using expletives to voice his displeasure at colleagues and staff.
    In September, he said he would not apologise for an incident in which he swore during a discussion with Labor backbenchers who were unhappy with his decision to cut the printing allowances for politicians.

    But a few months earlier Mr Rudd was more regretful for verbally abusing a flight attendant on a Royal Australian Air Force flight when he was not served the non-red-meat meal he wanted.
    Asked at the time if he has a bad temper, Mr Rudd said: “All of us are human. I’m human. I’m not perfect … and if I upset anybody on that particular flight, I’m really sorry. I apologise for it.”]

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/13/2770126.htm

  44. [*genuinely curious* why so few and why none, apparently, in the immediate pipeline?]
    I suspect such factors as: general anti-nuclear fear factors, need for further development and research investment, cheapness of coal.

  47. [A Sunday newspaper report says a Launceston-based driver for the Federal Government’s car pool service allegedly saw Mr Rudd direct a stream of expletives at his chief of staff and press secretary.]

    And guess who wrote that “article”

    A certain poisoned dwarf.

    Two Peas etc.

  48. The problem with advocates of nuclear power is that in order to keep their case simple they’ve consistently asserted and relied upon the following non facts.

    * Non nuclear, non fossil sources of energy cannot ever be cheaper than nuclear.

    Now that is an extremely dangerous assumption. The fact is that renewable technology continues to cost reduce and there is nothing in the laws of physics that prevents further cost reduction. As I said once before, it all boils down to basic materials usage and scale.

    Of course, nuclear could be cheaper. But the essential fact about nuclear is that like manned space flight, it requires exotic materials and extensive supervision and redundancy. I couldn’t rule out a cheap, mass produced reactor. Infact I’d love to see one for future space flight. But in Australia, where the only sane place to build a reactor is deep under the desert, its not going to be cheap.

    And don’t forget, that the balance of cost in any such power station is still the same – turbines, cooling plant and so on. Indeed, if you stack up a geothermal power plant versus a nuclear one its a no brainer. Because in quantity, geothermal wells will cost under $1M for a potential 20MW source of heat. No reactor can ever match that.

    * Non nuclear, non fossil sources of energy cannot ever, taken as a whole, provide reliable and at least in part, dispatchable power.

    Which is patently false, thanks to the diverse nature of the sources and the 24/7 nature of some of them.

    All in all, I’d love to see a super high tech nuclear reactor that’s cheap, but the reality is that very ordinary technology, well applied, and at scale, is going to have the last laugh.

  49. The Venus de Milo is over-rated Hellenistic kitsch. If you’re going to the Louvre, stand in awe in front of the Winged Victory of Samothrace. That’s Greek art. If you want the best Greek sculpture exhibition under one rood in the world, go to the Glyptothek in Munich.

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