Crikey reports today’s Essential Research poll has Labor’s two-party lead down to 52-48 from 54-46 last week. Essential polls are a rolling two-week average, so it makes sense that they should have trailed the pack in recording Labor’s mid-campaign slump. The Coalition is up three on the primary vote to 42 per cent and Labor up one to 41 per cent, both taking up slack from a three-point decline for the Greens, down to 10 per cent. More to follow.
UPDATE: Full report here. Julia Gillard is down a point on approval to 45 per cent and up two on disapproval to 40 per cent, while Tony Abbott is up two on approval to 40 per cent and down three on disapproval to 45 per cent. On preferred prime minister, the gap has narrowed from 48-30 to 45-33. Thirty-eight per cent say their opinion of Gillard has gone down since the election was called against 18 per cent who say it has gone up; more surprisingly, the respective figures for Tony Abbott are 9 per cent and 42 per cent. There are also questions on which party is best to handle various issues.
General:
• Michael Kroger has written an article for The Australian on prospects for the election which becomes doubly interesting if you read between some lines. Throughout the article he operates off post-redistribution seat status, giving Labor 88 rather than 83 seats, before concluding that “Labor would do well to keep its net losses to under 10 seats”. While this may have been framed negatively for Labor, the suggestion seems to be that he expects them to narrowly win. Kroger sounds especially confident about Sturt and Solomon, though by omission the former suggests he may expect trouble in Boothby. The Coalition is also rated likely to win a “swag” of seats in Queensland and up to five in New South Wales, along with Hasluck and Swan in Western Australia.
• On the Channel Ten news last night, Paul Bongiorno said a Liberal insider had offered him the implausible claim that their polling showed “Labor would be lucky to hold on to one seat” in Queensland. More believably, Geoff Kitney of the Financial Review offered that both sides’ polling showed “the Coalition is in front in every marginal seat in the state”, with Labor “battling to prevent the loss of all its Queensland seats with a margin of up to 4.2 per cent”, namely Herbert, Dickson, Longman, Flynn, Dawson, Forde, Brisbane, Leichhardt and Petrie. Mark Ludlow of the Financial Review says seats likely to be targeted by Kevin Rudd are in fact slightly beyond this range: Bonner (4.5 per cent) and Moreton (6.2 per cent).
• Tom Dusevic of The Australian comments on the Coalition’s latent fear of Labor’s marginal seat sandbagging abilities, which succeeded beyond the bounds of what appeared possible in the South Australian election in March. Significantly, Tony Abbott felt compelled to declare during his campaign launch that “to change this government you have to throw out your Labor MP”.
• Former Labor Senator Stephen Loosley writes in The Australian that “Labor is seeking to hold government without necessarily achieving the accepted prerequisite for winning”, namely that “every federal Labor government from Chris Watson to Paul Keating has been based on carrying NSW”.
• The Canberra Times reports a survey conducted for the Greens credited to YourSource (the panel used by Essential Research) has the Senate vote in the Australian Capital Territory at 36 per cent for Labor (down 5 per cent on the election), 30 per cent for the Coalition (down 4 per cent) and 26 per cent for the Greens (up 4.5 per cent). If accurate, the Greens would probably just fall short of taking the second seat from Liberal Senator Gary Humphries.
Local:
Leichhardt (Labor 4.1%): Tony Abbott was in northern Queensland last Monday, where he promised $62 million would be spent on the tourism industry. The choice of Cairns as the scene for the announcement was highly significant, as unemployment has rise to near double-digit levels there due to a downturn in tourism.
Herbert (notional Labor 0.4%): Abbott’s northern Queensland sojourn also included a stop at Townsville, where he promised $21 million flood-proof Blakeys Crossing. Tony Raggatt of the Townsville Bulletin found this “strange”, as apparently any local can tell you that flooding on the lower Bohle Bridge of Bruce Highway is a greater concern. On Thursday, Julia Gillard was in town promising “up to” $160 million for a section of a ring road linking the Douglas Arterial to the Bruce Highway at Mt Low.
La Trobe (Liberal 0.5%): Labor has promised $55 million to widen a dangerous stretch of Clyde Road, which the Liberals have trumped with an $85 million promise of a railway underpass. Sushi Das of The Age surveys the electoral terrain:
Labor’s strength around the mountain area has been countered by increasing Liberal dominance in the south of the electorate, where new housing estates have emerged. Narre Warren North and Pakenham form the heart of these newly developed areas attracting trades people, small business owners and young families who have been forced further out in their hunt for affordable housing. More housing developments are planned for nearby Officer over the next few years, making the south of the electorate one of the fastest growing corridors in Victoria. Indeed, an average of five families a day are moving into the area, according to the Cardinia Shire Council. The developments have provided local employment alongside jobs provided by more established light industries and firms producing car accessories.
I may be wrong but I am not sure that anything too drastic is going to happen
in Dawson yet. You can still bet on Dawson on Sportingbet and sports alive
and the odds haven’t changed much.
As someone has said, it is not clear that those revelations would cause too much
of an issue with many LNP voters.
[Not so sure – the media seemed to have picked up on the “momentum” shift (if there was one). And also I don;t think last week the news that Abbott was in front did him much good – especially the obvious hubris” the Libs started to display.]
The shift is on Grog, no doubt about it.
G’day Steve
we’ve been in alot of battles for Labor , seen it all before like th bad press , nervous nellies , snipers , Lib lies & spin and but worth it to fight them all , and direct campaign to peoples and this one reckon well we going to come out smiling
Chris Bowen On Lateline now. Revisiting Rabbott on 7:30 Report
“Of course nobody expects a leader to be across every piece of detail but when it comes to a center piecwe policy they should know something”
I like the odd diversion into other topics here (loved Bushfire Bill’s roof stuff!)
The “Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle” is often wrongly quoted when people really mean the “Observer Effect”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)
Such as the “Gonzo Journalism” of Hunter S. Thompson (or “The Australian”!!)
So boundary man, cast your vote where you have to, and get over the river on the day handing out HTV’s. 🙂
win or lose you’ll feel better for having done it.
Grog
Agree with you; I think there has been a mood shift this week. I am not sure what it is but I feel really upbeat that we are going to win and win well. Perhaps it was Julia’s performance last night or the betting plunges today. I know too well that things can change and I don’t want to jinx us, but I am feeling good, with a tinge of trepidation about what might happen in Queensland, Lindsay, Macquarie and macArthur.
Good to see that the Russians are taking climate change more seriously
in response to the terrible fires.
Are they following a pattern started by the Victorian state government?
Dr Good
Let me know when the odds move, but still backing a Labor win by 50-100 votes.
And also I don;t think last week the news that Abbott was in front did him much good
I think last week scared the sh*t out of some people, which is partly why ALP has rallied.
Betting market has always had ALP as strong favorite, and even though it is a lagging indicator, i suspect it is much more accurate. People think more about who they bet on than what they say to a random stranger at notice over the phone.
Strange that some here (who should be more aware) had almost given up on the ALP.
Here in Stirling at our house we have had 2 leaflets from Louise Durack
ALP, 1 leaflet from the greens and nothing from the very rich sitting
member Keenan (Libs).
I suspect that this is because Keenan has a database and knows who
lives here. I have seen that other people nearby have been
delivered personally addressed mail from Keenan while we
get none.
Just read Grog’s blog.
One blogger commented that Kelly O’Dwyer (young hope of the liberal party) apparently said on Sky today that by the time Labor roll out the NBN it will be outdated.
Blogger said that the Liberals must have something up their sleeve to alter the law of physics. The speed of light will always be faster under the Liberals!!
Gold!!
I just realised that looking out it is actually the point where Barton (seriously marginal at 14.9%), Grayndler and Watson meet.
I have lived in Grayndler, Kingsford Smith, Stirling, Perth and Curtin. Only once was any of them vaguely marginal.
[I suspect that this is because Keenan has a database and knows who
lives here. I have seen that other people nearby have been
delivered personally addressed mail from Keenan while we
get none.]
This isn’t unique to Keenan. Learn more about Feedback and Electrac here.
There’s no doubt about it one rule for Liberals down south who play up and another for those pesky Queensland National hayseeds with foul mouths. Barker should have stood in Dawson and he’d have been hailed as a knockabout hero.
[ The same level fo support was not offered to dumped Liberal candidate David Barker in the Sydney seat of Chifley in July.
He was disendorsed by the party after making anti-Muslim remarks and questioning the atheism of Ms Gillard.]
http://www.dailymercury.com.au/story/2010/08/10/abbott-dismisses-colourful-antics/
The overall odds being offered for an ALP win have been getting better
(more likely) over the day today but I can not yet see much changing
in the individual seat odds.
Maybe that kind of effect is what you would expect if there is general
but subtle move happening. You need proper polling to pick it up
and then when the poll results get published the betting and odds
might change.
Libs were very cocky last weekend. I think the tide is turning (please no more leaks)
from wikipedia……..
[The Australian is a broadsheet newspaper published in Australia on Monday to Saturday each week since 1964. The editor in chief is Chris Mitchell, the editor is Paul Whittaker and the ‘editor-at-large’ is Paul Kelly.
The Australian is the biggest-selling national newspaper in the country, with weekday sales of 135,000 and Saturday sales of 305,000, figures substantially below those enjoyed by Sydney’s and Melbourne’s leading papers.]
[ Here in Stirling at our house we have had 2 leaflets from Louise Durack
ALP, 1 leaflet from the greens and nothing from the very rich sitting
member Keenan (Libs).
I suspect that this is because Keenan has a database and knows who
lives here. I have seen that other people nearby have been
delivered personally addressed mail from Keenan while we
get none.
]
Dr Good, how can I get on Keenan’s database? Last election I wrote to his office and asked that they not send me his material. To no avail. This election, I have had numerous glossy lies from him, and nothing from Louise Durack. And one from the Greens that looked like a potato print.
Fib supporters ramping it up still on whirlpool, about the NBN:
e.g.
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1508442&p=11#r215
“And what is the minimum the ALP intend to deliver to upwards of 7% of australians then?”
Umm, Minimum 12Mbit/sec.
“In no way are they proposing wireless will out perform fibre, and it is quite extremely misleading and hypocritical of you to ignore his point around minimum wired speeds and to focus on wireless weakness that exist in BOTH approaches.”
Yes they are, thats what Fibs at the press conference are saying.
“What they are saying is people want choice. Not everybody WANTS to pay for 100+ fibre, and not everybody cares to use it. And that horribly and wastefully expensive FTTH isn’t going to help me when I want mobile internet, nor is it helping me when I spend the majority of my waking hours at work.”
Are you forcing us to use ADSL2+ and Wireless under the Coalition Plan? Where is the choice in that?
Under the Labor plan, you still have Wireless Access, you are not forced to use Fixed Line services.
“I’d certainly enjoy fibre to my home. But i’m not paying through the teeth for it. Clearly YOU want it. And that’s great. YOU can pay for it. And when enough people like YOU pay for it, it will become cheaper until people like me decide it’s value for money.”
It’s clearly you who do not understand value for money, since you obviously wanting Coalitions $7 Billion dollars on something we already have 🙂
“Until then, keep your grubby hands out of MY pocket and cough up for your own luxuries.”
It’s not your pocket, it’s the populations pocket.
WTF people are smokin!
[Correction:
ALP 81
Coalition 67
Others 3]
evan14, that adds to 151.
Thanks William
In other seats the database is not always used for leaflet drops.
Here, it seems that all of Keenan’s leaflets are coming out,
with printed personal addresses, and being delivered by
Australia Post.
Around here is just does not seem to use volunteers walking around
with unaddressed leaflets.
Chris Bowen may not be the most exciting politician but he seems like he has a grasp of policies across the board.
steve
Posted Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 10:52 pm | Permalink
“There’s no doubt about it one rule for Liberals down south who play up and another for those pesky Queensland National hayseeds with foul mouths.”
seems has always been
Dr Good@2822
Judi Moylan does the same thing with personalised letters.
Oh And Their ABC 9pm WA Radio News leads with phoney Tony’s Fraudband being the Bee’s Knees.
Channel 10 News showing grabs of Abbott’s interview with Kerry on the subject of broadband and being quite critical.
Chris Bowen doing a good job on lateline
WA on lateline’
Hmmmm
The parties are getting more sophisticated in their targetting of mail all the time. I live in Eden-Monaro, and my neighbours’ letterboxes are bulging with stuff, but I get no mail from either side, because the ALP have me on their “ALP member, don’t bother” list and the Libs no doubt have me on their “hostile, no mail” list. I’ve heard nothing from the Greens.
*gone*
I am in Stirling as well and I notices when I was out letter boxing for the Greens that others had personal mail from Keenan but I haven’t got any.
In 2007 when I got a generic letter from Keenan ie not personally addressed I sent an email to his office complaining that I had a no junk mail sign on my letter box so why did this letter.
The reply was that it was a bulk mail out through Australia Post so everyone got it, but in any case they didn’t consider it junk mail.
My response was that if it was unaddressed, unsolicited and unwanted it was junk mail.
Hardly had any mail from him since.
Don’t forget that Rudd cut back on electoral mail allowances. If I recall that was the issue that led to Rudd using some very strong language to some of his backbenchers when they complained. Psephos should be able to confirm as I think his boss was one of those on the receiving end of the Rudd outburst.
Ozymandias
You could tell Keenan that you will immediately pass on any
leaflets that you get from him to the local ALP.
My OH, who is a Green and was up all night with a potato
making and then delivering leaflets appreciates your comment on them.
By the way, did you volunteer to help at a booth on the 21st?
brisoz,
whirlpool can be a good forum for technical help and advice. There are some great people post there. Also, some complete and utter dropkicks post there. Some of them really dont think in terms of “pipes” relating to data flow which i find odd.
Hopefully after the 21st when it will all be moot. ALP returned, NBN rolled out too widely by 2013 for the Fibs to DARE make an issue of it again.
Ouch:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/tony-abbott-struggles-with-broadband-basics/story-fn3dxity-1225903654528
rossco @ 2830,
i believe rudd said, ‘i don’t give a flying x about what you duckers think..!’
[i believe rudd said, ‘i don’t give a flying x about what you duckers think..!’]
Ah yes, the good old days when you called a spade a shovel.
Well in Kooyong both the ALP and the Liberals have done two mail outs.
The Liberals hid their mail outs in plan envelopes that looked like they were from Australia Post or the AEC whilst the ALP just put the postcards in the mail box.
I agree whilst I am aware of the nasty langauge directed at politicans I really cannot work out why some people are so consumed by hatred.
Tom Hawkins
“Ah yes, the good old days when you called a spade a shovel.”
Which always reminds me of Wilde
“Cecily. This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade.
Gwendolen. [Satirically.] I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.”
Found this cruising a thread on Whirlpool about the NBN. Someone knows what they are talking about and put it quite well.
[Sure, you can mount directional antennas, or spend a lot of time to find the optimal position for your equipment. But it will never ever be considered as an equivalent quality to a cabled connection.
That’s not to say that it’s impossible.
It’s just impossible without either designing it as point-to-point, putting so many access points in that you’ve basically built a cable network anyhow, or by upping the transmission power beyond safe, legal levels.
Forget pipe dreams of a magical wireless future.
Wireless is a complementary technology.
It is not, and never will be a primary connection technology.
Certainly it is not business grade.]
Peter Martin has an interesting post on Nauru and why we shouldn’t o there again.
http://petermartin.blogspot.com/
@imacca/2838,
Unfortunatly people on WP think they are gods, and we must bow to them.
And thus, we must accept any technology they give us.
🙂
*sigh*
The Lateline story on 2 seats in the west seemed to be saying Ms Durack has no chance in Stirling. Am a Victorian so don’t know much about the issues there beyond what I think the show was saying, ie: mining is everything. Also very interested that in Hasluck the Libs are putting an indigenous candidate forward
There just isn’t the available spectrum for the wireless pipe dream, it’s .why it’s difficult to call what the Liberals released today a policy. It’s like the Conroy’s filter, you can argue as much as you like, call it a policy, but when it is all said and done, it’s technical nonsense, and technical nonsense is no policy
In case no one has posted this interesting AAP article which is currently on a few commercial websites like ninemsn
Abbott struggles with broadband basicsAAP
August 10, 2010, 8:58 pm 49 Comments
[Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has struggled to explain the basics of his broadband policy, saying he is not a “tech head”.
Mr Abbott was conspicuously absent when his colleagues, communications spokesman Tony Smith and finance spokesman Andrew Robb, unveiled the coalition’s $6 billion broadband plan in Canberra on Tuesday.
It guarantees minimum broadband speeds of 12 Mega bits per second (Mbps) for 97 per cent of homes, whereas Labor’s national broadband network promises 100Mbps to 99 per cent of households.
Mr Abbott was later quizzed on how many towers the opposition would have to build to implement the plan, how many kilometres of fibre would be required to connect them, and what spectrum would be used to deliver the network.
“I’m no Bill Gates here and I don’t claim to be any kind of tech head,” he told ABC Television in response.
Mr Abbott also drew blanks on what his broadband network’s peak speed of 12Mbps actually meant.
“Again, if you are going to get me into a technical argument, I’m going to lose it because I am not a tech head,” he said.]
http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/newshome/7741365/abbott-struggles-with-broadband-basics/
What I’ve realised is that Whirlpool is great for getting technical analysis, like here is good for getting political analysis.
In both cases though, we are too specialised for our opinions to count. We’ve all acknowledged at some point that our views are way too removed from the average voter. Similarly Whirlpool is not the place to ask whether some gadget is user friendly/easy to use.
In that vein, I follow Whirlpools “In the News” (current affairs/politics – you have to be registered there and been there for a while to access it) section, where they aren’t experts, to try to understand what “average” people think. It can be quite a shock sometimes.
The same article is on SMH online
All will be well Brizoz.
One of my barometers is my much loved but irredeemably Fascist aged mother.
I think she may actually NOT vote for the Fibs this time?? And one of the factors being she is on the internet A LOT and would love the 25 – 100 Mbps plans available on the NBN (as would i). She also has a wireless modem for when she goes on holidays down south with her mouldy mates.
She loves it, but having used it she wouldnt want it as her main connection at home.
I think that may be a problem for the Fibs. Wireless BB is actually not uncommon at the moment. People who have it usually have a specific reason for buying in and that reason is enough for them to put up with its bad points, particularly network slowdowns due to congestion.
So there are quite a few of the punters out there who will twig pretty fast that the Fibs proposal is dodgey.
Delroy’s What The Papers Say – The Australian:
Newspoll Seat Bereakdown says ALP will lose 16 seets in NSW&Qld.
Frank Calabrese@2847
That should be State Breakdown.
Unfortunately the WP in the news section is a disaster zone because of tendency for people to pick something inflammatory, biased or just plain stupid as a news item and then ad to that an “opinion piece” (which is mandatory) and what this usually gets is people with strong (and usually right wing) views to froth at the mouth about some beat up or just rant about how boat people should be shot, or some other “human interest” story.
Worst part is, that WP doesn’t have a policy or a culture that favors any kinda of discursive analysis. Its built into the system. You have to post an opinion.. and.. very often what you get is more Murdoch spin bias and beat up.
And the other problem is that a lot of it just aint news.. its opinion.
And the other problem is they insist on “a real news source”.. so the crap doled out in the Australian is fine, but a well researched blog article is not “a real news source”.. So for instance you can’t quote the url with the recording of Abbott as a student as a thread starter because it’ll get deleted.
But in the Broadband section of WP you find two things.. one is a general consensus on the NBN. And the other is a minority of newbies, and Liberal tragics that are there to just constantly carp and criticise anything so long as its related to Labor.