Morgan has published its first face-to-face poll conducted on Julia Gillard’s watch, other recent efforts having been phone polls. This one combines polling conducted over the last two weekends, and it shows Labor’s two-party lead up from 53-47 in the last poll under Rudd to 56.5-43.5. Those of you who have already looked at the Morgan press release might be surprised to learn this, as the headline figure is 55-45. This is because Morgan has apparently decided to switch from the “preferences distributed by how electors voted at the 2007 election” measure to “preferences distributed by how electors say they will vote”, and as has been widely noted this is less favourable for Labor. The Morgan headline’s statement that Labor has picked up a 6 per cent swing is based on comparison with last week’s anomalous phone poll result. Interestingly, the poll reports the opening of a huge gender gap, with Labor leading 60.5-39.5 among women and trailing 50.5-49.5 among men. The primary vote has Labor up 4.5 per cent on the last poll under Rudd, with the Coalition down three points to 38 per cent and the Greens down two to 10.5 per cent. Curiously, the sample was only 299 for the first of the two weekends, immediately after the leadership change, which explains the lack of a face-to-face result last week. The more recent weekend’s sample was a more normal 879.
A bit of federal news:
• South Australian Labor Senator Annette Hurley, who had the top position on the Senate ticket for the coming election, has instead announced she will retire. Her Right faction must now decide who will replace her as candidate for one of the two unloseable positions, the other of which is held by Left faction incumbent Anne McEwen. Another incumbent, Dana Wortley of the Left, is expected to remain in third place (UPDATE: I am informed Wortley is now in the Right, which has mostly absorbed the “Duncan Left” sub-faction of which she formed part).
• Denis Atkins of the Courier-Mail last week quoted a “senior Queensland LNP campaign official”. Herbert and Petrie in particular are nominated as seats Labor is now likely to win.
• Andrew Wilkie will be making yet another bid for parliament, this time as an independent in Denison. He narrowly failed to win one of the five Denison seats at the March state election, polling 8.4 per cent of the vote.
New South Wales news:
• State Greens upper house MP Sylvia Hale has failed to win her preselection bid for the inner-city seat of Marrickville, which the party is expected to win at the election in March. They have instead nominated the candidate from the 2007 election, Marrickville deputy mayor Fiona Byrne. The NSW Greens have also been struggling with the revelation of Lee Rhiannon, currently in the state upper house and endorsed to run in the Senate at the coming federal election, has used state parliamentary resources on her federal campaign. Bob Brown has called on her to resign her upper house seat sooner rather than later, but she is insisting she will resign when the election is called.
• The Wentworth Courier has published a list of Vaucluse Liberal preselection hopefuls which includes former Malcolm Turnbull staffer Anthony Orkin, together with previously noted “PR professional Mary-Lou Jarvis, Woollahra mayor Andrew Petrie, Woollahra councillor Peter Cavanagh, restaurateur Peter Doyle”.
• The Daily Telegraph reports on nightmarish opinion polling for the NSW Labor government.
793
The DLP probably would not have lasted as a political force if the ALP had been elected sooner. They only lasted one term of the Whitlam Government before their vote collapsed. The same thing may well have happened 3 years earlier if Whitlam had won in 1969. It may have taken more than one term if Calwell had won in 1961.
Even though I was a child at the time, the DLP (Frank McManus) always seemed cold and humourless – the same way that George Pell always seems now.
I do remember my mother vowing to vote for Jack Kane at some stage. Though being brought up a Catholic in NSW, the DLP influence was not really there , definitely not pervasive as it must have been in Victoria if you were Catholic.
Glen
Not after the war; before the war; Chamberlain with peace in our time at the expense of the Czechs.
Calwell in 1961? I think I recall one of his election promises… he tried to out-air craft carrier Menzies. That may have been the ‘two wongs don’t make a right’ election. But, hey, I was only a child at the time.
G, BK
Let’s face it, tgving someone a life sentence and then providing them with shelter, warmth, food and digital entertainment is not nearly as satisfying.
Tom 782
While I respect the motives of the people on the PTUA site, I don’t agree with some of their “facts”. They may be true in Europe but are usually false in an Australian context. Building freeways does generate some additional traffic but certainly in Adelaide it is no more than 2% to 5% of total demand. The main problems in Australia are rapid population growth and too low density in outer suburban sprawl to facilitate mass public transport. Induced demand is not really the cause of our problems. (I build mathematical models of that sort of thing for a living). We are going to be building more freeways in outer suburban parts of Australian cities whether we like it or not unless state and local governments are more willing to constrain urban growth bundaries.
Failure to plan for the future has made inner suburban PT construction more expensive than it should have been, except in Perth and Brisbane. Adelaide is trying to catch up, but there is a big backlog of PT expenditure needed.
OTOH I would agree with the economic arguments PTUA makes – most treasuries want to under spend in public transport because they only look at minimising government costs and don’t rationally try to minimise community costs.
On the other hand, the DLP may have been kept artificially alive by the fact that senate election were not in synch with the Reps right through the 60s. After all in Victoria in 1970, they did get 19% of the vote, and by then there was the Australia Party as well so you had a choice of two divergent strands if you wanted to put a pox on both houses.
Of course their demise would not have been so fast if there had not been double dissolutions in 1974 and 1975.
The Democrats also collapsed in a reasonably similar time frame.
Zoomster
#779
just like my #701 which was on a diferent polisy outcome tack to your 779 , and indeed your earlier different tack again , we do not get answers
howevr snuck into one Green’s generic reply was we should pik up boat people and process on th Navy boat THEN and THERE !
I think this was suposed to be an intelectual rebutal Reality is Greens do not hav a practical answer and insteads self rightously prepared to let boat people keep coming over oceans and drowning
It mainly focuses on two pilots and not on the broader politics of the period.
It does however show what it was like for pilots of the Czech Airforce to have to show the Germans around their airfield after they capitulated. Very grim and sad stuff.
While Chamberlain deserves a heap of blame.
I for one cannot forgive the French for not doing anything in March 1936 when the Nazis Re-militarized the Rhineland. General Gamelin and the French Government of the time under Albert-Pierre Sarraut were a bunch of gutless wonders!
The French had 100 divisions they could have called on and would have destroy the weak German Army. IMHO the French were gutless (although understandable after WW1) but this ensured nobody would challenge Hitler till 1939.
Socrates and Tom
Lack of public transport in outer suburban areas should be looked at more as a social equity issue. It is not surprising that there is a strong correlation in our major cities between public transport availibility and unemployment. With public transport, you can access the job market for the price of the fare ($50 for a weekly in Melbourne), without, you need a car (a few grand, insurance, rego etc.).
The other part of the PT problem in Australian cities is that there is a massive backlog (over decades with both sides of politics to blame) of provision of new services. Fast light rail links feeding into existing services are relatively cheap compared to heavy rail.
The other problem is location of jobs. If jobs are more concentrated, you can concentrate people using PT. Not that all jobs can be i.e. retail, schools, health care wgich need to be in the local area.
Chris, I’m curious to know what Catholic Labor voters think about deposing a church-going family-values Prime Minister and replacing him with an atheist who lives with a man she’s not married to. I’ve had various answers to this question from Catholic Labor friends. What do you think older DLP types will make of it?
Glen
Have you read Donald Horne’s “To Lose a Battle” on the 1940 French campaign? It is very good. Horne goes back to the weaknesses in France in the 1930s that led to their defeat in 1940 despite still outnumbering the Germans in tanks and infantry. Fits in with your comments on the Rhineland, unfortunately for the Czechs and others.
Socrates (792 at 5.57pm),
I think there was quite a difference between Queensland and Victoria. Remember in Victoria a large number of unions affiliated with the ALP went with the DLP. None did in Queensland.
I’ll read the link later as other duties call at the moment.
blackburnpseph (793 at 5.57pm),
There was never a move to make way for a younger generation, but there was a younger generation who wished there had been. A lot of the wind went out of the DLP’s sails with the election of the Whitlam government, and the DLP senators were not able to adjust to the new circumstances. They got lost in the Opposition. They should have backed Medibank at the time instead of their own health scheme, one I supported then but now realise was not as good as Medibank. They should have negotiated on the so-called democratic Elections referendum. It was misnamed as it was designed to actually entrench a pro-ALP malappotionment by making electorates equal in population not equal in numbers of voters. But the DLP senators could have argued that they would have supported it if it had been changed to “equal in numbers of voters” and if PR was to be constitutionally enshrined for Senate elections ( a suggestion I made to Frank McManus at the time). They were also crazy to join the Coalition in deferring Supply in 1974 thus giving us a double dissolution election that cast them out of the Senate. I could say more, but time presses.
blackburnpseph 810
Agree 100% except for your comments on light rail costs. That all depends on whether a corridor has been planend/preserved for it. Building LRT track in roads can easiyl run to $10M/km plus rolling stock. That ain’t cheap.
Psephos@737
and Conroy was born in the UK, but migrated as a child.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Conroy#Early_life
806
A significant proportion of the land needed for their to be car based sprawl is the land needed for roads. Freeways also enable sprawl by allowing people to live further away from the city for the same commuting time expanding the sprawlable area and thus creating traffic. The links do show evidence of induced traffic in Australia. It also mentions computer models being wrong by not calculating for induced traffic.
http://www.ptua.org.au/myths/congestion.shtml
Glen
In retrospect, the Frecnch marching in 1936 might have seemed the right thing to do. However, in France between the wars there was a very deep pacifist strand (driven by memories of WW1) and there was no public will to act. It was also a country that was deeply disillusioned with its political institutions (witness acquiescence to Vichy in 1940) and with an atrophied economy. It is interesting that much of the French economic ‘renaissance’ after WW2, even during the 4th Republic came about through reforms that were instituted under Vichy.
[I’ve had various answers to this question from Catholic Labor friends. What do you think older DLP types will make of it?]
can i say phes i have a beautiful 37 years old daughter that i wish had a lovley soul mate as long as she is happy.
i think from a catholic mum that answers your question. Its her wish to so i am not just saying it from a mums point of view
When will Madame DeGillard end Australia’s senseless involvement in the war in Afghanistan.
Shame.
No I havent but it would be a good read I reckon.
How that idiot Maurice Gamelin was made head of the French Armed Forces I’ll never know.
That idiot isolated himself in a bloody castle which had no capacity to send telegraph cables and had to get information from runners…i mean for goodness sakes!
Also the French had better tanks but did not mass them when they used them in battle.
Grrr makes me mad!
[blackburnpseph]
They were also broke at that time too.
Still it wouldnt have taken too long to win a war over the Rhineland IMHO.
Psephos,
The former DLP people I have talked too are not pleased with the replacement of Kevin Rudd, but it has nothing to do with Julia Gillard’s atheism or living arrangements. They think Mr Rudd was more sympathetic to refugees than Ms Gillard, and they do not like the method of replacement. While it is true that the majority of the DLP vote came from Catholics, it was not a Catholic party. Fred Riley, president in the 1960s, was not only a socialist, but also an atheist. Now, I really must go.
Glen
An interesting book on the subject is “The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s” by Eugen Weber. I have never seen it here, I bought it overseas so if you were interested you may have to go to Amazon.
blackburnpseph 810
Further to your coments on PT and jobs (which I strongly agree with), oen of the best approaches I have ever seen to PT and urban planning is in Toronto. Their land use rules are such that you can build a land use with significant employment (say over 50 people) anywhere but it must be within walking distance (I think their rule is 1/4 mile) of a PT service of reasonable frequency (these are defined). This has two huge benefits – it concentrates the employment, making PT more economicaly viable, and it leads to pressure from developers for governmetn to provide/extend PT services. Toronto is comparable in density to Australian cities, so it is a relevant example. It has much higher PT ridership per capita than our cities.
I was surprised when Faulkner originally accepted the gig as Defence Minister, as the word round the traps was that he wasn’t interested in a Ministry and intended to retire at the next election.
Thus I take his announcement this week entirely at face value: he intended to retire but was talked out of it by the PM.
In those circumstances, moving to the backbench has no sinister overtones.
Ron
yes, comrade, but we oldtimers on this web are used to the Greens avoiding answering straight questions…if I remember, the great flame war of a couple of years ago began with me asking a fairly innocent question about windfarms.
Strange how the answers we get to these questions tend to confirm the suspicions which made us post them in the first place!!
I must say that discourse today on PB has generally been very courteous and constructive.
Chris
Thank you for your special insights on the DLP. Pity time does not permit you to elucidate further. If somebody out there was writing a thesis on the DLP, you would be the ideal interview subject.
Glen
I am also reading “The Rommel Papers” editted by Basil Liddel Hart at the moment. Most people read it for the North Africa section, but the bit st the start on France 1940 is grimly fascinating. the ineptitude of the French commanders is jaw dropping. The poor French soldiers were never given a chance.
The DLP was very supportive of the union movement – provided it controlled it. The DLP developed from the Industrial Action Movement (The Movement) which was tied to Santamaria’s Catholic Action. With the blessing of the ALP it aimed at taking control of Communist controlled unions, . Their big success was taking over the Federated Ironworkers of Australia in 1949. The communists won the election but the Movement candidate, Laurie Short, took it to the high court (his barrister was John Kerr) because of “irregularities” and won. My father, a strict catholic who did not know the difference between a blast furnace and an open hearth voted for Short – so I suspect there were irregularities on both sides. They were less successful with the coal union – largely because it was an overwhelmingly protestant work force. As the cold war deepened the tensions between the movement and the ALP became severe particularly over Doc Evatt’s “interesting” style of leadership. The break finally came after Evatt made a very inflammatory attack on the movement and the Victorians sent an anti-Evatt, movement delegation to the 1955 Federal ALP conference in Hobart- where they were subsequently expelled. The movement was all very secret but run on a parish basis (at least in Newcastle) – the priest would announce at Mass that there would be a “meeting of the men of the parish in the presbytery tonight” and they would listen to a record of Santamaria before discussing tactics.
BK 826
Yes it is pleasant. We are all against tyranny; we just disagree on how to avoid it! 😀
Socrates…
One could almost make an argument that the Dutch and Norwegians put up a stiffer resistence given their respective sizes than France.
Socrates and others
Of course there were corridors allocated such as the Eastern Freeway in Melbourne which was meant to have a train line down the middle going to East Doncaster. The freeway and reservation are still there but the land rservation to East Doncaster was sold off by the Cain government in the 80s.
As an aside, I was walking past the train parking area at Camberwell some years back, and the destination roll at the front of the train was turned to East Doncaster!
[We are all against tyranny; we just disagree on how to avoid it!]
Nicely said, Socrates.
I know its late, but well done Glen on your membership decision. Hopefully for the party’s sake, Abbott’s demise will lead to some wholesale changes. Someone HAS to get rid of the dead wood, and move the party back to the centre. Turnbull??
Quite true Glen. The Belgians too, were very angry when their king surrendered. Most of the army still wanted to keep fighting. They and the French needed a Churchill…
I was also surprised about teh Polish campaign when I read that section. we think of it as being over quickly and therefore assume the Poles didn’t resist that much. In fact they fought very hard! It was just that their strategic position was hopeless. They took 200,000 casualties in 40 days.
The more I have studied them, the more prud I become of my forebears efforts defending Finland. The will to resist is more important than the weaponry.
So much dead wood so little time Andrew.
It may take 10 years or more sadly.
Ah well.
Like I said if I had it my way probably 25 MPs would be made to retire and new blood put in.
I’d make them all justify why they should keep their seat and what/how they have contributed.
As a kid in the fifties attending a Catholic school – I sat in Mass on Sundays hearing the parish priest telling the congregation not to vote for my grandfather who was the Federal Member at that time because he didn’t go to Mass on Sundays.
Something I have never forgotten!
blackburnpseph
Yes that sell off by Cain was a diasaster, and shamefully short sighted. The lack of connectivity now means the bits of the corridor where the median is wide enougha re largely useless because it will cost a fortune to connect to them.
Bannon’s decision to sell off corridors in western Adelaide in the 1980s was just as bad. It will cost us billions in future. It is one thing to say you don’t want to build a freeway, but when you sell off transport corridors you can’t build anything, including public transport. That is fatal.
Tom @ 816
Some of the traffic modelling used, particularly for tollways has been highly dubious. That was very much a case of “If s**t goe in, s**t comes out”. Unfortunately, the proponents of projects such as these are desperate to justify the investment without adequate due diligence, and those doing the modelling seem happy to oblige to make it all fit. If they were funded (or adequately overseen) by the public sector there may be more rigour in the process.
[As a kid in the fifties attending a Catholic school – I sat in Mass on Sundays hearing the parish priest telling the congregation not to vote for my grandfather who was the Federal Member at that time because he didn’t go to Mass on Sundays.
Something I have never forgotten!]
And some wonder why so many of us rail at the influence of religion in politics.
Two excellent recent books on this are:
* Julian Jackson, The Fall of France, Oxford 2003
* Frederic Spotts, The Shameful Peace, Yale 2008
I just finished the latter, it’s full of black humour about the behaviour of the French intellectuals under German occupation.
Another excellent read is
* Carmen Callil, Bad Faith, Cape 2006
This is about Louis Darquier de Pellepon, a loathsome man who was Commissioner for Jewish Affairs in the Vichy regime. His wife was born Myrtle Jones in Launceston Tasmania. It’s a very long and sad book but worth reading.
Socrates there is an interesting story about WW2.
In 1944 you know about the ‘Bridge Too Far’ well a grim afterthought was that the Dutch slaughtered a German force trying to capture Arnhem Bridge back in 1940.
Correct Socrates.
The Poles were holding their own well until they were stabbed in the back by the Soviet Union.
If only the French had on the 1st of September 1939 actually made a serious effort against the Siegfreid Line it would have crumbled and the Germans would have been up sht creek!
twobob, who was your grandfather?
]The Poles were holding their own well until they were stabbed in the back by the Soviet Union.]
No that’s not really true. The Poles were surrounded on three sides by German territory and they placed their best forces too far forward, to defend Poznan. The Germans thrust south from East Prussia and north from Slovakia and outflanked them. Soviets didn’t intervene until the Poles were already largely beaten.
Thanks for the pleasant chat people; I better go make dinner now and then its off to games night with friends and a bottle of wine. Call me a geek but I thoroughly enjoy it 🙂
Glen
It is abolutely shameless that Ruddock and Bishop B. have not been given their marching orders – especially since the post Howard leaders have all been from NSW and should (one assumes) have some local influence.
The Victorian Libs seem (at federal level) much better at renewing themselves – though with Stewart Macarthur they noticeably failed and lost the seat. Kevin Andrews for one in Vic should be given his marching orders.
[* Julian Jackson, The Fall of France, Oxford 2003
* Frederic Spotts, The Shameful Peace, Yale 2008
I just finished the latter, it’s full of black humour about the behaviour of the French intellectuals under German occupation.]
I just finished Spotts book as well. I agree with your comment.
On the AS front I can’t think why you would go all the way to Africa to choose refugees there who have no connection to Australia. On the other hand Sri Lanka is just next door so to speak and we are in Afghanistan helping to create conditions for refugees to flee. Personally I don’t see why we wouldn’t process those refugees here as these people are resourceful and active and would make excellent citizens once established – but if they are to be processed in Timor Leste then it will create jobs and industry for that country which has to be good for the unemployed and hungry who live there. More expensive for Australia but since we are doing well because of the off shore drilling in the Timor Sea it seems reasonable.
[No that’s not really true. ]
Well they had nowhere to retreat too after the USSR jumped in.
But the Poles were fighting a losing battle from day 1 considering the Germans sent in everything they had to win.
832
Only the Doncaster end that was, in my opinion, too far North (that might not have been the Government reason though) was sold. The middle of the Eastern Freeway was not and remains there usable for trains once the massive light polls are moved and new barriers are installed. The line would then be put in a tunnel and go to Doncaster Shopping town and the probably east to East Doncaster.