Limbo dancing

While you wait:

• The media has finally awoken to the possibility the Steve Fielding might yet win the race for the final Victorian Senate seat, which is the only result of the election still in doubt. The ABC projection has John Madigan of the Democratic Labor Party winning the seat after narrowly escaping exclusion at “count 21”, where he keeps ahead of Fielding with 3.29 per cent of the vote against 3.14 per cent. If Fielding gets ahead – and there is reason to think name recognition will boost him on below-the-line preferences – it will be he rather than Madigan that snowballs to victory with the help of the other preferences. However, Antony Green reckons it more likely whoever gets ahead will ultimately land short of the third Coalition candidate, Julian McGauran, who will benefit from the Coalition’s traditional strength on late counting. More from Andrew Crook at Crikey. Those wishing to discuss the Senate count are asked to do so in the dedicated post below.

• Government formation negotiations have turned up a number of agreements on campaign finance and electoral reform. The Labor-Greens alliance proposes that the two parties will “work together” to enact reforms that were blocked in the Senate last year by the Coalition and silly Steve Fielding: lowering the threshold for public disclosure of donations from $11,500 to $1000, closing the loophole that allows separate donations below the threshold to be made to multiple state party branches, shortening the gap between receipt of donations and disclosure, tying public funding to genuine campaign expenditure, banning foreign donations and banning anonymous donations over $50. Julia Gillard has said the deal she has offered to the independents, which has not been made available to the public, is along the same lines. According to The Age, “Tony Abbott has signalled he is prepared to consider significant reform but is yet to reveal the specific options he is putting to the three rural independents”.

• Also in the Labor-Greens agreement is a promise to “consider” a long-standing Greens private members bill which proposes to abolish the “just vote one” above-the-line Senate option that commits the voter to the party’s registered Senate ticket, to be replaced with preferential ordering of at least four party boxes above the line (seven at double dissolutions). This would result in votes exhausting where no further preference is indicated, rather than locking every vote in behind the sometimes highly obscure candidates who survive to the final stages of the count.

• Labor and the Greens also promise to “work together” to enforce “truth in advertising”, which the Greens have been very keen on since Labor targeted them with a smear campaign before the March state election in Tasmania. Establishing the terms of such a measure would be highly fraught, as noted recently by Robert Merkel at Larvatus Prodeo.

• Labor has agreed only to “investigate” the possibility of legislated fixed terms; the rural independents are calling for the length of the current term to be set by “enabling legislation or other means”.

• Tim Colebatch of The Age fancies Senate figures suggest Labor should ultimately win the two-party arm wrestle, the results of which won’t be known to us for at least a month.

• Tasmanian firm EMRS has published one of its regular polls of state voting intention, which has the Liberals down from 39.0 per cent at the election to 35 per cent, Labor down from 36.9 per cent to 34 per cent, the Greens up from 21.6 per cent to 26 per cent – overstatement of the Greens being a feature of EMRS polls. The firm suffered a further dent during the federal election campaign when its poll failed to detect the strength of support for Andrew Wilkie.

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.

4,048 comments on “Limbo dancing”

Comments Page 3 of 81
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  2. Treasury: 2 + 2 = 4

    Hockey: That’s a matter of opinion.

    Climate scientists: We must act now on climate change.

    Abbott: That’s a matter of opinion.

    At least they’re consistent in ignoring the experts.

  4. [I want Fielding to lose.

    Let me make that perfectly plain.]

    Me too.

    I remember seeing him on TV trying to deflect ridicule of him believing in a less than 10K year old Earth by claiming the PM (Rudd) believes that too (which I doubt.) And I was just thinking to myself: this is somebody who shares balance of power in the senate? The next senate election can’t come quick enough!

  5. We cleary have a ALP minority now.

    72 ALP, 1 Greens, Oakshott and Windsor.

    Eventually a promise from Wilkie not to block supply and not to vote ‘no confidence’

    Katter too I reckon for Labor. How could any of the indi’s now go with abbott ?

  6. JamesJ

    I agree. With the bit about parties being able to get their policies costed by Treasury at any time. it would make for a much better policy making process.

  7. [Gotta find a utube death march clip for the libs….]

    Dave, I’m sure any number of amateur film editors are working on “Downfall” as I type.

    I prefer any (& almost every) variation on Dies Irae from the earliest Gregorian to Black Sabbath’ “Black Sabbath”; perhaps, just to annoy anyone who claims Bob Santamaria as a mentor, something from Shostakovich: either the Leningrad or DSCH quartets.

    Nyaah .. given the Mad Monk’s musical preferences, make that Black Sabbath!

  8. [Hockey: conservative bias allowance? what the hell is that?]

    Did he really say that? Seriously?

    These guys are making it up as they go along.

  9. [Fielding is only entertaining in the car crash sense.]

    When you have the likes of Christine Milne to listen to much of the time, you need some colourful characters, car crash or not.

  10. Part of the ALP-Greens deal was to allow the Greens to have policies costed by Treasury and Finance. There’s no reason not to just have this apply across the board.

    In any case, given both sides now agree there should be a parliamentary budget office this shouldn’t happen again.

  11. [Katter too I reckon for Labor. How could any of the indi’s now go with abbott ?]

    Dave, I never thought it wqas going to be about an initial ‘pork’ grab.

    If it was just one Indy the parties had to win over, then maybe that would work. This was about the chance for the Indies to have ongoing influence to a government.

    The biggest question is who will be Speaker. Katter, perhaps?

  12. Another $11 Billion causing problems for abbott.

    http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/telstra-nbn-broadband-election-coalition-labor-abb-pd20100901-8V52E?OpenDocument&src=sph

    Abbott’s Telstra thorn

    Paul Budde

    2 Sep 2010

    As we have said in previous analyses, the NBN deal with Telstra has been a godsend for that company.

    Not everybody in the financial market seems to quite get this, but Telstra certainly does and it has already launched its own transformation plans.

    The NBN deal puts the company in an excellent position for the future. Recent developments clearly indicate that the NBN will be used in a trans-sector way, with plans, contracts and agreements in place regarding smart grids, e-health and e-education. Hundreds of millions of dollars are already involved in these plans and if the NBN survives this will quickly move into billions of dollars.

    So Telstra will have a great deal to lose if the Coalition were to win and did then actually kill off the NBN and e-health and e-education..

    The two key issues for the Coalition are:
    – It doesn’t want to structurally separate Telstra
    – It will cancel the $11 billion agreement between Telstra and NBN Co.

    While the Coalition has shied away from it, all of those involved in the telecoms industry agree some form of structural separation urgently needs to take place to move the telecoms industry forward, with or without an NBN. Interestingly, just before the 2007 election, the then Minister for Communication, Helen Coonan, indicated that structural separation was a distinct possibility if the Coalition were to win that election. The Liberal Party’s most senior telecoms expert, Paul Fletcher, has been advocating in favour of Telstra’s separation for many years.

    So in 2007 Telstra was against structural separation, while the Coalition was possibly in favour of it. Now, in 2010, Telstra is amenable to structural separation and the Coalition is against it. It is puzzling to us why the Coalition would not just build on the progress that the industry has made in three years.

    However, that might be a relatively easy question to answer. The key stumbling block for the Coalition would be the $11 billion deal with Telstra.

    Within the total national blueprint of the NBN it would make a lot of sense for the Coalition to honour the deal. However that would be problematic for the Coalition, the primary issue, of course, being the cost. The $11 billion would necessitate a major overhaul of its budget.

    The problem with an initiative as complex as the NBN is that one can’t simply remove parts of it. We often compare it with juggling several balls in the air – if you drop one everything collapses.

    As the government has already done all the hard work in negotiating a deal with Telstra, the Coalition might think twice about starting this process all over again. The NBN – being the political issue it is – will quickly become a millstone around its neck if it becomes bogged down in another three years of negotiations. This certainly would not seem like an attractive a scenario to the Coalition.

    The Telstra deal, the infrastructure, the regulations and private investments are all linked together and, whatever certain people might think, the Labor government has, amazingly, been able to keep the whole process on the rails – to such an extent that the majority of Australians like what they see. They may not quite understand the entire picture, and many well have questions regarding the cost, but they do understand the vision and the broad strategic plan behind it. This is called leadership.

    The other problem would be how the Coalition could reorganise its own broadband plan on the run, because that is the time that would be available to it.

    The way out there could be the combination of elements proposed by us before:
    – A longer rollout period for the FttH network
    – Utilising existing HFC and DSL infrastructure for a while longer
    – Using more wireless technologies as an interim solution
    – More private investment participation in metro areas.

    Within that context it could be possible to reshuffle some of the money and place it in different pigeonholes, to make it look different, and to perhaps be more palatable for the Coalition.

    If the $11 billion were split into its components then the rough divisions would be as follows: approximately $2 billion would relate to the universal service obligation; approximately $4 billion would relate to infrastructure leasing; and only approximately $5 billion would be an actual subsidy to switch off the copper network.

    Some of this could be ‘weaved into’ some of the options mentioned above. With clever manipulation the NBN and NBN Co could be saved, Telstra could be kept on side and some costs could be shaved from the $43 billion.

  14. I also want Fielding to lose. I enjoyed some of his antics over the years (in a guilty way) but am well and truely past that. But what a choice, Fielding, the DLP or Julian McGauran! As long as FakeFielding lives on in Twitter land, I’ll be happy.

  15. I love this election.

    Abbott: Climate change is crap.

    Oakshott and Windsor: Oh well, we might just go and chat to Stern and Garnaut anyway.

    Abbott: Oh crap.

  16. Fielding is like a mysterious rash: first it is intriguing and interesting, then it becomes annoying, then it becomes scary and all you want to do is rid yourself of it…

  17. Itep,

    Joyce is ‘colorful’ and an idiot. Heffernan is ‘colorful’; sometimes too ‘colorful; but still makes a serious and often considerate contribution to the development of policy.

  20. The ‘difference of opinion’ line might come up over and over agin for a while.

    Kristina Kenneally: we deserve to be re-elected.

    People of NSW: we have a difference of opinion

  21. Yeah, the indies are calling Abbott on every known species of Phoney’s BS. And these three have got cred with conservative punters, so it really stings the coalition’s butt.

    Bless ’em.

  22. [The libs moved heaven and earth to AVOID their costs being scrutinised.

    Now they have been caught out.]

    Indeed. It is really this fact, rather than the size of the discrepancy in figures, that is going to hurt them most. The fact that for weeks Abbott and Hockey used every excuse under the sun short of “the dog ate my homework” to avoid having the figures looked at until forced to by the Indis looked bad enough. Now that their figures have been found to be wrong it completely destroys any trust that those who were already sceptical can have in them as honest dealers. This is far more of a blow than simply the sort of “disagreement” scenario they might have been in if they had been up front and open before the election.

    My own view is that anyone who reads Oakeshott’s public statements on a wide range of matters over the last couple of years would think that he would have had to compromise most of the principles that really matter to him to support Abbott in minority government. Windsor, one suspects , was probably less clear cut in his views, but keen to have a situation where he and Oakeshott both supported the same side. The costings “black hole” provides him with a straightforward rationale , easily sustainable within his own electorate, to go with Labor.

    The Libs decision to hide their costings prior to the election is now looking like a disastrous campaign error in the light of the present situation.

  24. I wish Julia had done more to sell Labor’s economic record during the campaign.
    I’m not getting carried away either with thoughts of impending victory for the progressive side of politics, because you can be sure that the MSM on the whole will keep propping up Phoney and his forces.

  26. The one I’m waiting for:

    Coalition leadership: We must stay united.

    Coalition parliamentary members: We have a difference of opinion.

  27. Fielding represents all that is wrong with out upper house electoral system: dodgy deals, tickets, party hacks, and no popular support whatsoever.

    I accept we had to create Frankenstein to realise the Lab must be destroyed – but that lesson is learned.

    Please dont subject us to his cretinous debasing of our Senate for another 6 years. They’re an offence to the intelligence.

  28. Andrew Robb: a difference of opinion (again)

    Apparently they calculated on a “different interest rate” than treasury. And Robb reckons treasury “isn’t telling them why they have a difference”

  31. From Paul Kelly (the Oz)

    I once respected this guy. I liked his thesis about the progression of strong economic reforms in Australia via Hawke, Keating, Howard. But this is utter nonsense.

    Apparently Gillard trying to form minority government (when she needs 4 votes) is a sign of desparation and weakness.

    [Pact puts Labor brand and Gillard leadership on line
    THAT the ALP has entered into an alliance with the Greens to stay in office is a measure of Labor’s weakness and desperation. ]

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/pact-puts-labor-brand-and-gillard-leadership-on-line/story-e6frg6zo-1225913036640

    NB: Dont waste your precious brain cells by reading any further.

  33. None of the independents will take the Speakership.

    Agree. It was never on. It would have harmed them, ie forty pieces of silver to them personally. They can and will do much more for their electorates on the cross benches.

    They are also now able to say to their electorates, we gave abbott & Co every opportunity to form government, however they did their utmost to conceal vital budget costing information from australian votes. They can then point out that either the libs are incompetent with financial matters or they lied.

    In such circumstances, the indi’s can say, abbott & co failed every basic test as to being fit to form government. The Indi’s can also say the libs need to go away and rehabilitate themselves.

  34. thanks for the link Dave, this is a good article by Budde.

    The 11Bn deal with Telstra is very important, both for making the NBN more viable and for the chance for a structural separation of Telstra.

    If the coalition had sense and were not reflexively opposing everything the Govt does, they would have quietly backed it.

  35. Aprt from exposing the lazy and sloppy approach to the Libs’ costings, the release of Treasury costing underlines a singular failure of the MSM.

  38. my say, yes it is out there. This is the latest from the SMH

    [
    One of the key rural independent MPs says he is now suspicious of the Coalition after the Treasury uncovered a multi billion dollar “black hole” in their election costings.

    Tony Windsor said the revelation of at least a $7 billion discrepancy also raised questions over whether he could now support Tony Abbott’s bid to form a minority government.
    ]

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-election/windsor-suspicious-of-coalition-after-black-hole-revelation-20100902-14nxz.html?autostart=1

  43. [are you listening to ABC radio? Andrew Robb is on right now. I can’t bear to listen to his drivel.]

    Victoria, persist – he’s pure comedy gold. I can’t believe this guy has a job in politics.

  44. TSOP

    Have woken with a bit of a headache and a fleeting memory of a now-extinct “avatar” which would strike fear even into the Na’vi. But good to see “black hole” leading both 7 and 9 morning news.

    ps – non-labor spouse definitely not happy with late night/early morning blogging

  48. [madcyril
    Posted Thursday, September 2, 2010 at 8:39 am | Permalink
    my say, yes ]

    thanks cyril.did you see the sub headlines gratton thinks its just a problem

  49. [Have woken with a bit of a headache and a fleeting memory of a now-extinct “avatar” which would strike fear even into the Na’vi. But good to see “black hole” leading both 7 and 9 morning news.]

    Hahaha! Sorry about that. My plan to parody the righties went a bit awry with the name change thing but that avatar was a cracker. Worst part is it is still sitting in my gravatar account, so I’ll have to go in later and delete it – which means looking at it 🙁

  50. My Say is this what you asked about ?

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-election/windsor-suspicious-of-coalition-after-black-hole-revelation-20100902-14nxz.html?autostart=1

    One of the key rural independent MPs says he is now suspicious of the Coalition after the Treasury uncovered a multi billion dollar “black hole” in their election costings.

    Tony Windsor said the revelation of al least a $7 billion discrepancy also raised questions over whether he could now support Tony Abbott’s bid to form a minority government.

    ‘We probably understand now why (Opposition Leader Tony Abbott) wasn’t interested in releasing the numbers,” Mr Windsor told ABC television last night.

    abbott & robbs big mistake – trying to take Windsor for a fool !

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