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.
Antony, I’m game. What’s a Labor CP voter and a Green TCP voter, please?
Campbell resigned before he could be expelled.
Keating was peeved that Campbell’s response to a question about what Keating could do for Australia, was “A State Funeral”.
I don’t know. Dr Good invented it.
The Norwegians get to eat their own vomit. That’s what happened when you try to be too cute and cant tell the difference between a POTUS and a celebrity:
[Norwegian historian disappointed with Obama’s remarks on war – OSLO, Dec. 11 (Xinhua) — U.S. President Barack Obama’s remarks on Thursday about the role of war in preserving peace disappointed some Norwegians, especially when they came from the mouth of a Nobel Peace laureate at the prize awarding ceremony.
Norwegian historian Hans Olav Lahlum told the Aftenposten newspaper that he was very disappointed by Obama’s lengthy defense of the wars the United States have been engaged for years in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was quoted as saying that he believed members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, who handed the 2009 peace prize to Obama, were also disappointed. ]
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-12/11/content_12629824.htm
TCP = 2CP = 2-candidate preferred if that is what you are asking.
Boerwar,
Fadden was Treasurer back in the 40s and 50s. His background is not too dissimilar to Barnaby.
http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A140134b.htm
Antony, Thanks for replying, but I’m none the wiser and probably that’s about what one would expect. What I understand from reading what you and Possum have written about Bradfield and Higgins, and William’s reporting/commentary is that the movement wasn’t uniform, was more pronounced in more well off booths, though nothing to write home about, overall meant sweet FA in terms of any generalisation to the wider electorate and I’m just getting confused by more informed pseph debates than is good for my mental health.
HSO,
The Libs held onto seats they have always held.
Greens didn’t do much.
Some evidence that working class voters voted Liberal rather than Green.
Some evidence that well to do voters voted Green rather than Liberal.
Number of voters down by about 12,000.
Everyone gets a second chance next year when the handsome Labor person competes.
Just visited the Nats Blogs. Seems that despite the “overwhelming community backlash” to the CPRS there isn’t anyone wanting to talk about it on the Nats blogs. Perhaps they just send emails to each other or perhaps their counters have been rigged.
HopingHagen is still alive, it appears. hmmm, 18%, would that make the Greenies happy?
[Copenhagen climate summit releases draft final text – Rich countries are being asked to raise their pledges on tackling climate change under draft text of a possible final deal at the Copenhagen summit.
A document prepared by one of the summit’s chairmen calls on developed nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25-45% from 1990 levels by 2020.
Analyses suggest that current pledges add up to about 18%.
The document leaves open the exact target for limiting temperature rise, amid disputes between various blocs.
Small island states and poorer nations of Africa and Latin America have called for the document to endorse the target of keeping the temperature rise since pre-industrial times below 1.5C (2.7F).
This is below the figure of 2C (3.6F), which was endorsed by the G8 and major developing economies in July, and implies the need for drastic emission cuts. Both figures are listed as alternatives in the draft document. ]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8407824.stm
Unfortunately Barnyard won’t last very long in shadow Finance. And he did not sound impressed about needing to toe the line.
I expect something stupid will again slip out of his mouth soon by pure accident. The problem with Joyce is that he has no idea about finance and so has nothing to say except whatever ‘finance’ type thing slips into his brain. It could be anything at all, and not being a particularly intelligent or aware politician he will blurt it out, and it is guaranteed to be nonsense.
He needs to be given a daily scrip to stick to and make sure he is never interviewed except by friendly shock jocks.
[He needs to be given a daily scrip]
TP, he needs the STFU script 😉
script
LP is still invisible to me.
Finns
If the World agreed to start at 18% cuts by 2020, I would be over the moon.
It would be a great start.
LOL! Wow, Scott Morrison outlines the Liberal election campaign. The Liberals are real humans, the Laborites are actually robots, I assume sent from the future to destroy John Connor and the Liberals.
[HopingHagen is still alive, it appears. hmmm, 18%, would that make the Greenies happy?]
No. If the Government agrees to 18%, the Greens will want double or triple
I would love to see this, a debate between Gore and Palin, except it would be so embarrassing you would hope the horse-shotgun mercy rule would be imposed.
[Sarah Palin Hedges On Agreeing To A Debate With Al Gore
INGRAHAM: Would you agree to a debate with Al Gore on this issue?
PALIN: Oh my goodness. You know, it depends on what the venue would be, what the forum. Because Laura, as you know, if it would be some kind of conventional, traditional debate with his friends setting it up or being the commentators I’ll get clobbered because, you know, they don’t want to listen to the facts.]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/10/sarah-palin-hedges-on-agr_n_387848.html
Fins
It’s not a matter of what the Greenies want, it’s a matter of what the Earth needs and of what will give us a sustainable economy.
ShowsOn
You mean they would pressure them to do more… And why not? 🙂
[LP is still invisible to me]
Started doing it to me – spoke to Mark B, he said it’s an ISP Caching problem – should be fixed by the weekend.
At least the new Japanese foreign minister didn’t run the standard trope that the whaling is for scientific purposes.
I actually respect them more if they just stick to the line that eating whale meat is part of Japanese culture and that science has nothing to do with it.
Of course the Japanese only reverted to eating whale meat in large amounts during WWII because they couldn’t afford to eat anything better, only about 5% of the Japanese population eat whale meat at least once a week.
Sorry, GG back at 58, would agree with what you’ve said. I suppose I got somewhat waylaid by the to and fro between Antony Green and Dr. Good about the booth behaviour stuff. Not to mention the acronyms confusing the hell out of me.
Went off to watch Lateline.
A labor tcp or tpp voter means two candidate or two party preferred
labor voter. this means that in their seat in that election the last
two candidates left after preferences include a labor one and that voter preferred
the labor candidate over the other remaining candidate
thus in higgins in 2007 they pit Alp higher than lib
in 2009 you had to be a lib or green tpp voter
Thomas Paine, does anyone have any idea why anyone is even vaguely interested in what Palin thinks? Seriously, who the hell cares enough to waste the breath to talk to her about politics? Sure, ask how are the kids going, how’s it working out with the kids who don’t want to get married but are having a kid together. You know, that sort of caring Faux News sort of stuff.
THM,
I love being lectured by morons who would not know their arse from their nose (primarily because they are always in close proximity).
antony
see my second blog page showing the explanation
of the swing at each booth
my theory explains the roughly linear relationship
between 2007 tcp and tcp swing
there need be no such linear relationship
at all but there is definitely one that you point out
I have seen no other simple explanation for that that
fits so well
I have seen no other simple testable
[Norwegian historian disappointed with Obama’s remarks on war]
If it wasn’t for the willingness of the US to wage war, Norway would still be under Nazi German rule. Some people have short memories.
You’ve been very kind, Dr. Good, and I did grasp TPP some time back. I think I’ll just slope off from your and Antony Green’s interchanges here on this topic. It’s like getting caught in a conversation between a couple of neurologists. Things can get very esoteric for outsiders. That’s O.K.
Bernard Keane on Joyce and co economic populism:
[Where are the countervailing influences in the Liberal Party that will uphold the party’s recent reform tradition? Joe Hockey, now the most powerful moderate, lacks the policy grunt to resist the populist urgings of Abbott, Joyce and Andrews. Nick Minchin’s ministerial record was undistinguished, mainly because he was more focussed on factional warfare than on his policy responsibilities. He certainly failed to play the traditional Finance Minister’s role of Dr No in the final Howard term.
It will be up to the party’s key business backers to explain just how disastrous the prescriptions of Andrews and Joyce will be. It might perhaps be too much to expect the commentariat to do the same. But one can imagine how Julia Gillard in 2002 would have been pummelled by the right-wing media if she had called for an 85% cut in immigration, or if a Labor shadow Finance minister had attacked Chinese investment and suggested America was going to default. They would have been called unfit to hold office, and correctly so.
Let’s see if there’s a double standard when Coalition figures peddle that nonsense.]
Let’s see indeed.
pls excuse scrappy postings from mobile phone
also on higgins why propose non uniform behaviour
(eg rich Alp voters changing differently
than slightly less rich ones)
when a uniform explanation of behaviour
works better
what would occam say?
Psephos, Norway was considered part of the Eastern Front?
[If it wasn’t for the willingness of the US to wage war, Norway would still be under Nazi German rule]
wasnt it like Vichy France
Quisling and all that?
Harry, it wasn’t part of any front. The Germans were still in occupation at the end of the war. But if the US (and the USSR) had not been willing to sacrifice millions of lives to liberate Europe, then Norway would never have been liberated, and would now presumably by ruled by Vidkin Quisling’s grandson.
Psephos, if not part of a formal front, was there not a resistance through out Scandinavia generally?
There was a resistance movement in Norway, although it didn’t achieve a great deal. (There has been a lot of postwar mythologising about the Resistance movements in occupied Europe. Mostly they only served to bring down reprisals on civilians for no very good reason, and to feed the postwar ambitions of the communists.)
Gusface, it’s an interesting thing, isn’t it? The formal government vs. resistance movements in those countries. The countries now known as Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, have over the centuries fought against whoever invaded them last, either Russia or Germany in their various forms.
psephos
fact 1
norway was ruled by an ersatz gvt-cf quisling,the resistance was instrumental in the liberation of norway,as with most other occupied countries.
fact 2.
the yanks and ruskies had NOTHING to do with the liberation of norway.mainly british and norwegian free army.
fact 3.
the finns kicked the ruskies ass and stopped the complete rout of scandanavia.any scandanavian that you sugest to that russia saved them would deck you.And rightly so.
fact 4.
Appalling.
Today’s contribution! Barnaby. Living up to your name, really. Sorta dopey sounding really. Not that I thought necessarily thought that, until you went on and on and on. In the last weeks.
My apologies to innocent barnabies and joyces.
Just like to thank you so much, Barney, for dropping us in to redneck territory.
Attempting to bring Australia down, in the eyes of the world.
So Pauline of you. Is it something about your shared heritage, Barnaby?
Must we hear your mind numbing, destructive idiocy.
Get on with supporting Australia, would you?
cw@ 89: Just enjoy the Tory self destruction.
The Nazi were defeated because they broke the number one rule of European warfare. Do not invade Russia. They even commenced their invasion on the same day of the year as Napoleon (22/6). The USSR would have won even if America had stayed out (but Hitler declared war on the USA 7 days after they declared war over Pearl Harbour) but they would have had more of Europe under there control (rest of Germany, France Italy).
What’s fact 4, Gus?
Psephos, I think I’d be inclined to agree about the romanticisation of the resistance movements. Invisible cat, I’ve done it myself about the glorious days of teh evil Joh and Vietnam War days. O.K., not the same as being a resistance in an occupied country, but it is difficult to imagine lying supine under the rule of the Nazis or their cats paws or puppets.
[What’s fact 4, Gus?]
The utilisation of nuclear power is the only way to ensure energy security, while cutting carbon emissions enough to limit global warming to a 2 degree increase.
gus, gus, it’s me and dinsdale! C’mon, you can do it.
I thought that was fact 27.
[The utilisation of nuclear power is the only way to ensure energy security, while cutting carbon emissions enough to limit global warming to a 2 degree increase]
That s why i love you shows
XXXXXXX.
Harry,dinsdale
give me a minute to stop laughing
Hey, Bilbo! What the hell happened to my avatar? Why are my comments being moderated? All I did was update my e-mail address and password.
[psephos
fact 1
norway was ruled by an ersatz gvt-cf quisling,the resistance was instrumental in the liberation of norway,as with most other occupied countries.]
1. I’m quite aware of who ruled Norway during WW2. Quisling was just a puppet of the Reichskommisar Josef Terboven.
2. No-one “liberated Norway”. The entire country was firmly under German control until the day of the German surrender. The Germans then handed over to the royal Norwegian government, which had spent the war in London, in an orderly fashion.
3. The resistance did nothing but some sniping and reprisal killings of Quisling’s followers.
4. More Norwegians served in the Waffen SS Wiking Division (15,000) than in the resistance.
[fact 2.
the yanks and ruskies had NOTHING to do with the liberation of norway.mainly british and norwegian free army.]
As I said, no-one “liberated Norway.” The Norwegian armed forces based in Britain arrived after the German surrender. But there would have been no German surrender had it not been for the war effort of the US and the USSR.
[fact 3.
the finns kicked the ruskies ass and stopped the complete rout of scandanavia.any scandanavian that you sugest to that russia saved them would deck you.And rightly so.]
The Finns were eventually defeated by the USSR in March 1940. If Stalin had wanted to occupy Finland, Sweden and Norway in 1945 there was no-one to stop him, but he chose not to. Scandinavians, having suffered far less during the war than just about anyone else in Europe, are very quick to forget these facts.
[fact 4.]
Do your homework before lecturing me about World War II, OK?
97
In your opinion did the Swiss and Irish suffer more, the same or less than the Scandinavians?