The latest quarterly Newspoll survey of state voting intention in Western Australia provides grim news for the Labor opposition, with the Liberal-National lead on two-party preferred reaching a new high of 57-43. Labor is down two points on the primary vote to 30 per cent, the Liberal are up three to 41 per cent, the Nationals steady on 6 per cent and the Greens are down two to 14 per cent. Opposition Leader Eric Ripper, whose hold on the Labor leadership is thought to be looking tenuous, is down two points on both approval and disapproval, to 34 per cent and 42 per cent, while Colin Barnett is up a point on approval to 55 per cent and down one on disapproval to 32 per cent. Barnett’s lead as preferred premier has widened from 60-19 to 61-17. The survey covers 842 respondents over the past three months, with a margin of error of about 3.5 per cent.
Frank – I’ve never voted Liberal, was happy enough to give my preference to the ALP in the last federal election, but not in the state election. I think many of the Lib MPs are really awful – extreme rightwingers and conservatives – but they are not the reason the ALP is doing so badly in the polls, are they?
You should look a little harder at the ALP’s faults if you want to make the right changes. If you don’t make changes the ALP will be in opposition for some time. I don’t want them back until most members of the last ALP government are gone.
[boscombePosted Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 3:22 pm | PermalinkFrank – I’ve never voted Liberal, was happy enough to give my preference to the ALP in the last federal election, but not in the state election. I think many of the Lib MPs are really awful – extreme rightwingers and conservatives – but they are not the reason the ALP is doing so badly in the polls, are they?
You should look a little harder at the ALP’s faults if you want to make the right changes. If you don’t make changes the ALP will be in opposition for some time. I don’t want them back until most members of the last ALP government are gone.
]
How predictable – you are a Green.
I admit that there were faults, but that doesn’t deny the fact that this Minority Govty has NOT been placed under the same sort of Scruitiny that was given to the Gallop/Carpenter Govts.
Oh and you think the Liberals are saints. – then think again.
http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/pta-warns-of-train-driver-strikes-to-hit-royal-show-20100923-15ntg.html
To say the libs would have build mandurah is just silly. There record is a promise to build one to Ellenbrook and having won a marginal seat on this lie they are now merely promising to make the same promise again.
Property developers got a tax break from Colin while the rest of us got fee hikes. Give it a rest!
[WeWantPaulPosted Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 3:49 pm | PermalinkTo say the libs would have build mandurah is just silly. There record is a promise to build one to Ellenbrook and having won a marginal seat on this lie they are now merely promising to make the same promise again.
Property developers got a tax break from Colin while the rest of us got fee hikes. Give it a rest
]
And the local member for Swan Hills which is in my electorate hasn’t made many friends in Ellenbrook over this and the debacle over a major Power outage last Summer.
And another thing re the Train Drivers and the Health workers – Libs are digging their heels in.
Police stage a Rally re Assaults on officers – The Govt capitulate on their every demand.
Plus re the Fiona Stanley Hospital and the New Midland Hospital – services will be privatised.
So much for standing up for the worker.
Wewantpaul You make some valid points although I reckon the polling was pretty generous to the ALP at the time due to Buswell and his problems. Once that was removed, I reckon a true reflection emerged.
I think its now not doom and gloom (as some have posted) in WA ALP and would dispute the apparent lack of talent etc. Watching parliament Wyatt, McGowan, Cook, Papalia, Saffioti, Baker, Tallantire, Johnson, Templeman, Roberts and Logan etc all manage to land some pretty good blows and make their opponents look out of their depth and hopeless.
Basically the Government is propped up by one person (Barnett) with the rest being very very ordinary.
Unfortunately for Ripper the ALP needs a Leader who can cut through and sell this message.
[nixon 67Posted Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 4:05 pm | PermalinkWewantpaul You make some valid points although I reckon the polling was pretty generous to the ALP at the time due to Buswell and his problems. Once that was removed, I reckon a true reflection emerged.
I think its now not doom and gloom (as some have posted) in WA ALP and would dispute the apparent lack of talent etc. Watching parliament Wyatt, McGowan, Cook, Papalia, Saffioti, Baker, Tallantire, Johnson, Templeman, Roberts and Logan etc all manage to land some pretty good blows and make their opponents look out of their depth and hopeless.
Basically the Government is propped up by one person (Barnett) with the rest being very very ordinary.
Unfortunately for Ripper the ALP needs a Leader who can cut through and sell this message.
]
You forgot one other person – Rita Saffiotti – She can really get under Barnett’s Skin and he doesn’t like it one bit.
As for Ripper his problem that he still has the Baggage of being Treasurer.
FC@58
[You forgot one other person – Rita Saffiotti – She can really get under Barnett’s Skin and he doesn’t like it one bit.
As for Ripper his problem that he still has the Baggage of being Treasurer.
]
Whoops didn’t notice you included Rita 🙂
And as I keep saying why isn’t our sanguine media reporting what is said in Parliament and by the Opposition ? Federally evey fart by the Libs is reported in greatb detail, yet in WA the Media all but ignore them.
If Johnston can land a blow we are talking very weak opposition indeed. I agree with you Nixon, and frankly I think on of Alan’s mistakes was he got to see the lightweights in the Lib party daily in parliament and got a false sense of security. Boscombe might think the Libs have talent but the way Barnett treats his cabinet he doesn’t think so. Barnett is right. And I’d bet money a randomly draw alp member could best the Member for swan hills .
Yeh I agree Frank, Saffioti seems to get under the Premier’s skin. He doesn’t seem to like being challenged on economics or his Governments budget performance.
Wewantpaul, I agree Barnett doesn’t trust his Cabinet and with people in it like Constable, Marmion, Castrilli and soon to be returned Buswell would you ?
Porter is simply copying failed law and order policies from the UK and I expect in the next few years he will meet with the same failure and public cynicism that greeted such measures. The Cameron Conservatives have recently stopped many of the same failed policies WA is now getting on behalf of our AG.
In mentioning the Member for Swan Hills you have provided one of the clear examples of the complete absence of talent in the Barnett Government.
Frank – your comment @52 was changed after it was published. Can all commenters do that?
[boscombePosted Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 5:03 pm | PermalinkFrank – your comment @52 was changed after it was published. Can all commenters do that?
]
William deleted my comment – I rewrote it in more temperate language 🙂
And why isn’t stuff like this given more airtime ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so5I6hSQaJk
Temperate language Frank! Please no!
dovif @41 How does a person a fixed income in a service industry like nursing or education benefit from the mining boom? Their cost of living is increasing, especially housing costs, and their income is static.
The trickle down effect is rubbish. Most of the profits go overseas. As for the wages – if your business is not directly connected to the mining industry, then you are supposed to wait until some cashed up miner walks through the door? Much of their money goes on foreign manufactured items. If they spent it on goods manufactured in the Eastern states then the East might not mind their interest rates going up because of the growth in the mining sector in Qld and the West. The inflation driven by this industry is going to push up everybody’s interest rates – not just those making the money. And there are many in the West who are not benefiting from the boom who will also be asked to pay the price.
As for
As for?
Now this is interesting ?
[ LHMUWA Disability workers are told by the premier that it is inappropriate of them to lobby MPs in parl. But are mining and business execs ok Col?
2 minutes ago via web]
will Colin’s Fan club defend here defend this ?
As for – something – but I can’t remember now…. long day at work.
That leader was Alanna but she was past over for Ripper.
Me too!!!0
Alannah didn’t have enough faction boss type friends.
William,
When pollsters say “margin of error of about 3.5 per cent” are they talking about what is usually called (in statistical theory) the 95% confidence interval, i.e. the chance of the true value lying outside this 7% range is 1 in 20?
The statement in the original article that “the maximum margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.5″ is sheer nonsense of course, would you agree?
Nakrian, I’m not a statistician so I wouldn’t presume to say that it’s nonsense. Your own description is certainly how I understand it.
Two years til the next election, folks…
There’s a by-election coming. From all reports, the Leader of the Labor Party had a pretty good campaign in Willagee and has done pretty well again so far in Armadale. Bearing in mind the departure of a popular local member of long standing, there’ll be some interest in the result I’d imagine.
Those putative contenders for the top job might bear in mind that it is dastardly difficult to get a bit of oxygen as a Labor Opposition Leader in the WA media, even with a Stokes run West Australian. Wresting the leadership into your own hands now will do little more than ensure that you have two years of similar polling figures ahead of you. Having taken the leadership, faced with similar polling for that long, could you be assured of holding onto it for that length of time without one of the other contenders mounting exactly the same campaign anywhere between one year from now and election day?
Good luck with that.
Gweneth 66
Lets see should I take Gweneth’s analysis or the head of the RBA in Australia’s analysis
I know what I would be choosing
Yes BHP and Rio Tinto are about 50% owned by foreigner …. reason? BHP merged with Billiton in GB to create a bigger miner, to create synergies to benefit Australian shareholders
In the 1990s pre merger, Australian owned 100% (it was less) of a $100 billion company, now we own 50% of a $200 billion company …. wow 1/2 the profit is going overseas …. wow…. wow the tragedy, we are now getting twice the profit, but have to give 1/2 back… please think first
As for your incomplete analysis on nursing or education, BHP and Rio had been recruting people from overseas to work in Australia, these people bring kids and uses hospitals, a lot of mining towns would be closed without BHP and Rio, Hospital and Schools in those town would close. And without money coming into the country from China, mores Australians would be out of a job and this would eventually have an effect on schools and hospitals.As the head of the RBA would say, there is a flow on effect on other industry… THAT IS FACTS
As for your incomplete analysis on manufacturing industry. Those industry is in trouble in the first place. If you can pay someone in Indonesia $2 an hour to make goods, and in Australia you have to pay them $15. Companies are going to go to Indonesia with or without the mining sector. The fact that some of these people can go to jobs in the Mining industry is a good thing in the first place
As for pressure on interest rate … the best way of easing pressure on interest rate is to have an economy not going well, for example the US and Japan has very low interest rate, because people are unemployed, those countries have lots of debt and their money is deflating. Australia is doing the opposite, low unemployment, wages growth, lots of export earning, if you are unhappy about that, feel free to leave
[75 Rewi LyallPosted Friday, September 24, 2010 at 8:15 am | PermalinkTwo years til the next election, folks…
There’s a by-election coming. From all reports, the Leader of the Labor Party had a pretty good campaign in Willagee and has done pretty well again so far in Armadale. Bearing in mind the departure of a popular local member of long standing, there’ll be some interest in the result I’d imagine.
Those putative contenders for the top job might bear in mind that it is dastardly difficult to get a bit of oxygen as a Labor Opposition Leader in the WA media, even with a Stokes run West Australian. Wresting the leadership into your own hands now will do little more than ensure that you have two years of similar polling figures ahead of you. Having taken the leadership, faced with similar polling for that long, could you be assured of holding onto it for that length of time without one of the other contenders mounting exactly the same campaign anywhere between one year from now and election day?
Good luck with that
]
Hear bloody Hear 🙂
Better to select a new leader iin December 2011 so as to give him 12 months in the lead up to the 2013 poll.
I think nixon makes some good points. Although the 2008 election allowed the nats/libs to kiss and make up, it didn’t really increase their talent in the parliament.
The liberal party had to tell Deidre to wait a bit longer so colin could boost his ego, and the class of 08 is left lacking any real talent – the likes of Alban, Miles, Britza, Jacob, Harvey, Blayney, Francis, Sutherland, Abetz, Krsticevic, Nahan and Mitchell. Then there is marmion, the only member from the class of 08 to be trusted with a portfolio (thanks to adele), and even he is showing that he has a lot of work to do before he is any chance of coping with the responsibility of a key portfolio.
Where is the liberal party WA heading? At this rate colin will have to take over other key portfolio’s because his current stock of Ministers are not up to the game and the class of 08 (after two years) are still struggling to find their feet.
You then look at class of 2008 on labor’s side – dare I say it – It is quite impressive – Cook, Saffioti, Tallentire, Baker, Johnston and throw in Tinley and possibly Buti. The future of wa labor does look bright, especially with youngs stars like wyatt and papalia supporting the more seasoned mcgowan, roberts and quigley. Lets face it the future of the libs in WA is lookign pretty dire.
WA Labor is a circus. Despite the best efforts of their friends from channel 7 they failed in 2008 thanks to the more balanced reporting of channel 9.
[ Robina
Posted Saturday, September 25, 2010 at 12:36 am | Permalink
WA Labor is a circus. Despite the best efforts of their friends from channel 7 they failed in 2008 thanks to the more balanced reporting of channel 9.
]
Gees, School Holidays have started – does Mummy & Daddy know you’re playing on their computer without permission ? 🙂
dovif @ 76 Thanks for your rigorous demolition of my arguments. I forgot that the only people that count are the ones with shares. Then I remembered my place. Sorry to questions the greed and gluttony mantra. Of course we should just be grateful that the anointed ones allow us to work for them. I duly tug my forelock.
Oh and dovif I should tell you – the most convincing argument you gave was that last one:
In future use this at the end of all your arguments. It will guarantee you success every time.
“face palms*
Gweneth
LOL, you really need to get out more
If you asked any miners whether they have benefited from the Mining boom … ie having their income doubled ….
If you asked the Australian government whether they like taking 30% of the profits of the miner, ie The difference between the tax in 2010 and 2000 for BHP and RIO Tinto alone is about $12 billion, whether they are happy that Rio and BHP are paying the wages of nurses and schools already
I think “face palms” says it all
There is no Labor opposition. Labor hates WA, they always have and they made this very clear during the Creen / Copeman deal of the 1980’s.
Our choices are clear. Go with Barnett, who despite his (many) faults is actively fighting for our state and our right to determine our own future – or go with the party that wants to keep us as a subservient funding machine for vote grabbing stunts in Sydney and Melbourne.
The sooner we renegotiate the federation the better off we will be as a state. And possibly as a nation. The “spending”states need to start living within their means and Labor will never support that line or anything like it.
I am astounded that they still exist within our state parliament.