Highlights of day three

Peter van Onselen offers the following on internal polling in The Australian:

The Australian understands that Labor’s track polling shows its support is lifting in all states except Queensland, where the combinations of the toppling of Kevin Rudd (a local boy) and the deep unpopularity of the state government and Premier Anna Bligh are stifling support. The numbers suggest Labor could lose a host of seats in the Sunshine State. Attempts to arrest the decline include efforts by candidates to localise campaigns, along with sending Julia Gillard to Queensland for the early part of the campaign to break down the growing angst against her for tearing down an elected prime minister. Labor sources point out the irony is that during Rudd’s leadership, Queensland had been a problematic state where dissatisfaction with the job he was doing was high.

Perhaps surprisingly, the dip in support for Labor in Western Australia has been contained and a small upsurge has occurred. The same results have been seen in NSW on the strength of Labor’s changed border protection policy under Ms Gillard. The Coalition is facing financial constraints and is not doing anywhere near the amount of expensive track polling it did at the last election, or as much as Labor is doing now, according to one senior Liberal source. But the quantitative research the Coalition has done is said to have buoyed Tony Abbott and Brian Loughnane about their chances of a competitive result or even an upset victory. The Coalition is apparently tracking better in key marginal seats than published polls with wider samples such as Newspoll might suggest.

Around the grounds:

• Labor and the Greens have confirmed a preference deal in which the latter will receive Senate preferences across the country, and the former will get lower house preferences in 44 of 50 marginal seats. The Sydney Morning Herald reports local Greens in six seats have refused to abide by the deal: Lindsay and Gilmore in NSW, Herbert, Blair and Dawson in Queensland, and Sturt in South Australia.

• While Tony Abbott was having a rough ride in Melbourne, Julia Gillard spent the first weekday of the campaign targeting the Townsville seat of Herbert, where Liberal member Peter Lindsay is retiring and redistribution has nudged the seat from super-marginal Liberal to super-marginal Labor. Gillard spent the visit spruiking the Better Regional Cities policy which was unveiled the on Sunday, which will commit $200 million to affordable housing in regional cities.

• The Australian’s Samantha Maiden and Dennis Shanahan have both written today of a slick and efficient early campaign performance from Labor’s media unit that is leaving the opposition in its wake. According to Maiden, “media organisations are being carpet-bombed by an ALP campaign unit on steroids that is racing out media alerts, audio files of Coalition gaffes and interview transcripts via the social networking site Twitter”. The Sydney Morning Herald reports the Liberal campaign headquarters will not be operational until today.

• The ABC reports police have ruled out a firearm being responsible for damage to the home and campaign office of Brent Thomas, Labor’s candidate for Hughes, with a slingshot deemed more likely.

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.

1,348 comments on “Highlights of day three”

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  4. Socrates
    [My point was not to praise Abbott, but this sort of stunt raises sympathy for Abbott. Cheap schoolboy pranks are not the way to make your side look professional, let alone take any (high?) moral ground. The best way to highlight character flaws in the opposition is ot present yourself as the opposite. gillard does that. Conrad does not.]
    I agree! So far Gillard & the team have shown themselves to be controlled and professional.

  5. ruawake. Abbott surely cannot do any worse than yesterday. He would have been given a stern talking to, and will have to pick up his game.

  6. Those two internal polling stories seem to be contradictory to me. Only one side is telling an approximate version of the truth. The other side must be lying about its results.

  7. Cuppa, yesterday:

    [Actually hindsight will probably show that signing that ridiculous SerfChoices “pledge” was his first Latham moment. He botched it badly, as well as drawing a billboard-sized association between himself and WorkChoices. This one’s going to haunt him till the end of his political career – one of his WorstChoices.]

    http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2010/07/18/newspoll-55-45-to-labor-galaxy-50-50/all-comments/#comment-525754

    Michelle Grattan, Sydney Morning Herald, today:

    [ Shades of Latham in Abbott’s IR stunt ]

    http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/shades-of-latham-in-abbotts-ir-stunt-20100720-10i4t.html

  9. [ ruawake
    Posted Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 9:08 am | Permalink
    Abbott to hold a press conference at 10am. It has to be better than his last two surely?]
    Either another attempt to kill Workchoices or an announcement of gigantic spending proportions.

  11. victoria

    Abbott’s habit is one of generating multiple positions on policy.

    Various Poll Bludgers have been on about Abbott’s habit of generating a multiplicity of positions. You might recall the Two Bob Each Way points made on numerous occasions.

    For months no-one much in the MSM took any notice at all of Abbott’s habit. Labor was providing all the infotainment value and ‘A Great Big Tax on Everything’ was a handy 15 second sound byte.

    Now that the focus is on Abbott, his habit of generating multiple policy positions on each issue is biting him badly.

    Abbott may finally work his way through to a ‘final’ position but he has turned developing a policy position into being all about the journey, and all about his failings, and not the policy destination.

    Compare and contrast with Gillard.

  15. Boerwar. I would agree. It will be interesting to see if he is capable of communicating a clear and concise message from now on.

  16. Labor wants to pack our nice Sunshine state marginals with immigrants because Sydney is overflowing and it’s been screwed up by mass immigration, and with Labor running the infrastructure it’s turned into an absolute disaster for Labor politically.

    So when the infrastructures failing, the waters drying up and the punters of Sydney scream for immigration to be reigned in, what do you do as a Labor Prime Minister?

    Well simple really… you move the problem elsewhere and make everyone else suffer the same shitty lifestyle. Too bloody easy! Don’t deal with the problem at the source… don’t deal with the infrastructure stuff ups… don’t admit that mass immigration is a problem… just spread the problem around and make it other peoples problems.

    Fill Townsville up with hundreds of thousands of new residents so we can’t water our lawns, can’t drive to work in a reasonable amount of time, clog our roads, send the cost of living through the roof and turn our beautiful city into the dumping ground for 10 Years of Labor incompetence.

    No Miss Gillard, the people of Townsville will see right through your little stunt. You might be trying to sure up voters in Western Sydney but I will do all I can to make sure you lose Townsville.

  20. Oh, bugger it. Here is the article

    [Nobel laureate lauds Labor’s stimulus spend JESSICA IRVINE ECONOMICS WRITER
    July 20, 2010

    THE Nobel Prize-winning US economist, Joseph Stiglitz, has described the Rudd government’s stimulus package as ”one of the most impressive economic policies I’ve seen, ever”, but also expressed disappointment at the concessions granted to mining companies under the new minerals resource rent tax.

    In his first interview since arriving in Australia for a three-week speaking tour with The Economic Society of Australia, Professor Stiglitz, a former World Bank chief economist, told the Herald the nation risked becoming a victim of the ”natural resources curse”.

    ”Countries that have a rich endowment of natural resources often end up with high exchange rates and so, as a result, have difficulty broadening their economy in other areas,” he said.

    Advertisement: Story continues belowThat’s why the move to extract a higher return from abnormally high prices for iron ore was such a ”good policy”, he said. ”I have to say that I’m completely puzzled at the ability of the iron ore companies to seemingly win or at least partially [win] on that issue.”

    Such heavyweight endorsement of Labor’s stimulus spending is a boost to the party’s economic management credentials amid allegations from the Opposition that the stimulus money was ”wasteful spending”.

    Professor Stiglitz said it was inevitable people would complain about cases where money had been misspent, but Australia’s stimulus had got it broadly right. ”Not only was it the right amount, it was extraordinarily well structured, with careful attention to what would stimulate the economy in the shorter run, the medium term and the long term.

    ”When I look around the world, it was, I think, probably the best-designed stimulus program in the world and you should be happy that in fact it worked in exactly the way it was designed to work.”

    He said falling consumer sentiment made it clear the US was heading for a ”double dip” recession and a second US stimulus package was needed – however, it was unlikely to be delivered due to the lack of public support.]

  21. Truthy SE Qld has had 1,500 people a week moving in for over a decade. Nothing to do with immigration.

    The only people trying to get immigrants to Townsville are Lib staffers. 🙂

  22. autocrat could you put the link there again it goes elsewhere tried to find it to save time but cannot

    Dee fixed it up (thanks!).

  23. About that AWU video. The funny thing is, is that they didn’t use a mock up photo for Bronwyn Bishop. That’s taken in the morning before she puts her hair up!

  24. [Either another attempt to kill Workchoices or an announcement of gigantic spending proportions.]

    It’ll have to be a ‘policy’ announcement to try and move on from the fiasco of the past two days. Who wants to bet the media just focus on WorkChoices in their questioning? :p Vultures.

  26. TTH @ 66

    [ LNo Miss Gillard, the people of Townsville will see right through your little stunt. You might be trying to sure up voters in Western Sydney but I will do all I can to make sure you lose Townsville. ]

    The more I hear this sort of screeching from Lib diehards, the more confident I am of a Labor victory. They’re getting nervous. Abbott’s “Latham moment” can’t have helped.

  28. [but I will do all I can to make sure you lose Townsville. ]

    Go on TTH 🙂 Stand as an independent and run completely on an anti-immigration campaign.

    It was interesting to note an observation on Sunday that the Liberals have already conceded Herbert 😉

  29. That kid from Longman was on Melankochie this morning, he wasn’t as bad as I thought he’d be. The show wants to catch up with him in the final week of the campaign to get his views – unless he cops it in the neck from the LNP in the meantime. 😉

  30. [”When I look around the world, it was, I think, probably the best-designed stimulus program in the world and you should be happy that in fact it worked in exactly the way it was designed to work.”]

    Wow, that dunce Ken Henry really lucked out with that…I’m sure Sloppy Joe, Barny and Roksam will be able to tell us why Stiglitz is wrong as well.

  32. [Your ABC in Brisbane has been on the case today, phoning Liberal National Party HQ to get a pic of the new Liberal candidate for Griffith Rebecca Docherty.

    Unfortunately for us (and Ms Docherty) her profile will need a bit of work.

    “Rebecca who?” said the friendly campaign worker “We’ll need to call you back about that”]

    Things not going so well when your party HQ doesn’t know who its candidates are, regardless of how new they might be.

  33. Dee. The stimulus spending was in essence good policy. My main concern is the insulation scheme. Unfortunately, the scheme was rorted and safety compromised. The opposition will probably hit the government in this area.

  34. [That kid from Longman was on Melankochie this morning, he wasn’t as bad as I thought he’d be. The show wants to catch up with him in the final week of the campaign to get his views – unless he cops it in the neck from the LNP in the meantime. ]

    If that kid wants to get elected the best thing he can do is go on a holiday. I reckon his face will appear in more ALP brochures than LNP ones.

  36. AFR reports that
    [the union movement is poised to agree today to a levy of $1 per member which will raise about $1.8 miilion to continue its atack n the Coalition’s workplace policy]

  38. [Michelle Grattan, Sydney Morning Herald]

    [Are her opinions usually published in the SMH?]

    Usually she’s published in The Age. But from time to time Fairfax shares articles between their various outlets. For example, the same article might appear simultaneously in The Age, SMH and National Times.

  39. Dee

    Thanks for the Stiglitz link. He is speaking in most capitals over the next few weeks except Adelaide 🙁

    No doubt, if asked, he could also comment on how serious a “threat” the Australian government’s debt was.

  40. [The Victorian branch of the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) has withdrawn its support for Labor at the Federal Election.]

    Didn’t it do the same thing in 2007?

  41. ruawake. The ETU had a ballot voted on yesterday by its members. Essence of vote was to stop funding and supporting Labor Party. It would appear that vote has favoured this outcome. It would appear that the ETU is now recommending its members to support the Greens.

  43. Communist Revolution happening down here in Melbourne.

    Several hundred ( or thousand) protestors from all the major Unions MUA, ETU, CFMEU all marching up the left hand side of St. Kilda Road just now.

    Somebody bring out the strike breakers 😀

  44. Wow, wouldn’t it be great to have the unions pulling the strings on two of the three major parties. (Insert sarcasm symbol here).

    So if Bob Brown doesn’t have a say on preferences and policy positions we know who does.

    Maybe we can have a Greens #spill where Dean Mighell goes on Lateline and says our members no longer support Bob Brown, we are calling for Lee Rhiannon to take the leadership.

  45. Socrates. Have you heard about Greek journalist killed on doorstep at hs home. Apparently, he was about to expose corruption. Journos name was Sokratis.

  46. The Libs in SA are screaming “Foul” because Labor has beaten them to the punch with postal voting mailouts which come from senators’ offices but do not carry party identification. Sour grapes.

    The Greens have done themselves no good by refusing to preference the progressive, intelligent and articulate Rick Sarre ahead of Christopher Pyne in Sturt.

    The Adelaide ‘Advertiser’ yesterday ran a guide to marginal seats which included McEwen (NSW) and Melbourne (NSW)! No kidding.

  47. TheTruthHurts @ 66

    You are a bigoted and ill informed fool, and not worth the time it would take to rebut your obnoxious and xenophobic lies.

    William, the sin bin, please?

  50. Geoff Kitney in AFR rightly points the finger at policy laziness over the last 12-24 months:
    [Burning and burying Work Choices should have been done a long time ago if he believed hed had to neutralise the political risks for the Coalition of talking about workplace reform.

    He should have put in its place a modest reform package – perhaps centred on unfair dismissals.

    This would have been more economically credible than completely vacating the labour market reform space]

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