GhostWhoVotes reports the latest Newspoll has the Coalition with a 52-48 lead, unchanged on a fortnight ago. More to follow.
UPDATE: The Australian reports Julia Gillard’s preferred prime minister rating is at an equal low of 49 per cent, down four points on last time, while Tony Abbott is up two to 34 per cent.
UPDATE 2: Graphic here. Labor is up a point on the primary vote to 34 per cent, the Coalition is steady on 43 per cent and the Greens are down a point to 13 per cent. Gillard’s personal ratings are now worse than Abbott’s: she is at at 41 per cent on both approval (down three) and disapproval (up four), while Tony Abbott is up three on approval to 44 per cent and down four on disapproval to 42 per cent.
Other matters of note:
• The Prime Minister has announced a panel will be established to consider a referendum question on constitutional recognition of Aborigines. The panel is to report by December next year, and it is currently suggested a referendum will follow at some point within three years. While logic might dictate that it be held simultaneously with the next election, the possibility that election day referendums might act as a drag on the vote of the incumbent has been noted by Peter Brent at Mumble. The panel will have to consider whether the recognition should involve a largely symbolic preamble, or substantive change to the body of the constitution. A 2008 parliamentary inquiry report identified two expressly discriminatory provisions that should be reviewed with any consideration of a preamble. One was the redundant section 25, which requires that population figures used to determine the states’ House of Representatives seat allocations exclude any races disqualified from voting under state law – something now forbidden under the Racial Discrimination Act. The other is section 51(xxvi), empowering the federal government to make laws for “the people of any race for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws” – from which the words “other than the aboriginal race in any state” were excised by the 1967 referendum. This came under the microscope during the Hindmarsh Island Bridge case of 1998, when the federal government argued that it was not for the High Court to distinguish between permissible positive laws under the section and impermissible negative ones. The court was unable to reach a majority ruling, and constitutional law expert Anne Twomey argues the distinction would likely prove highly vexed in any case. A number of options were canvassed for replacing the existing provision with “a new legislative power in Indigenous affairs subject to the rule of non-discrimination on the grounds of race”, none of which strike me as being terribly promising from an electoral point of view. The same goes for any number of more radical suggestions for constitutional recognition, such as George Williams’ call for constitutional recognition of agreements reached between indigenous people and the various tiers of government, or Professor Kim Rubenstein’s “special Indigenous executive council” empowered to seek explanations from parliament regarding legislation that did not meet its approval.
• Mal Brough has declared an interest in Liberal National Party endorsement for the Sunshine Coast seat of Fisher, incumbent Peter Slipper having most likely signed his political death warrant by accepting Labor’s backing for the deputy speaker position. Brough, who lost his seat of Longman at the 2007 election (Wyatt Roy recovered it for the LNP on August 21), turned his back on the LNP after unsuccessfully resisting the merger as state president of the Liberal Party, believing the terms to have been unduly favourable to the Nationals.
• Some subjects for further investigation, courtesy of events in the mother country. Firstly, Britain’s High Court has overturned the election of Brown government Immigration Minister Phil Woolas for falsely claiming that his narrowly unsuccessful Liberal Democrat opponent had been courting Islamic extremists. Woolas also faces possible criminal charges, and has been barred from standing for public office for three years. Andrew Bolt reproduces one of the offending publications, and argues – rightly in my view – that the presence or otherwise of Woolas in parliament should be decided by voters rather than courts. The episode stands in stark contrast to Australian practice, where the only substantial sanctions on misleading publications in election campaigns require that the deception be “in relation to the casting of a vote” – for example, through the distribution of misleading how-to-vote cards. The Labor-Greens agreement reached after the August 21 election obliged the government to seek to address this by establishing a “truth in advertising” offence in the Electoral Act.
• Secondly, the Court of European Rights has ruled Britain must grant the right to vote to prisoners, who have been denied it since the Reform Act of 1867. Parliament must now decide whether to thumb its nose at the court. There are echoes here of our own High Court’s 2007 ruling that overturned a Howard government move to extend the existing ban on prisoners serving terms of longer than three years to all prisoners regardless.
• Some Christmas gift ideas for the election wonk in your life. Courtesy of the Federation Press comes Professor Graeme Orr’s The Law of Politics: Elections, Parties and Money in Australia, “the first dedicated monograph on the law on democratic politics in Australia”. And from the Cambridge University Press comes Sally Young’s How Australia Decides: Election Reporting and the Media, a “four-year empirical study” offering “the only systematic, historical and in-depth analysis of Australian election reporting”.
Frank
The Royal Commission sorted through it all and came up with a reasonable decision based on the best available evidence and expert opinion. I’m going with their interpretation.
Frank @ 4047
It is statements like that which make you look a fool.
GG, you can tell when Diog loses the argument. He either changed the subject or just grovelled and grovelled.
No, it’s people like you two who think RC’s are squeaky clean.
I’ll let you in on a little secret – The Terms of Reference can and will produce the result the person calling for desires.
GG
As I said above
I’ll go with them rather than someone whose brother-in-law has been involved in some emergency situations.
I’m funny like that.
whateverpedia
you can run, but you cant hide
incontinent geriatric welsh bungee jumpers are few and far between
oh and a bit unsteady on their feet
Finns @ 4054
Please explain in a concise and logical way how Diog lost an argument?
Finns,
He must like the view in that sewer. His favourite song is Brown Eyed Girl.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHRPlPs2heo
It proves you believe in fairytales.
Frank
Good one. Are you saying Brumby, whose Govt set the TOR, had it in for Nixon?
who set up the royal commission
lab? lib? who?
no, cerrtain members of the Victoria Police.
And Police are great bullshit artists – they make politicans look like the Pope.
Bemused, because I say so. Is that concise enough for you.
And you can keep on bemusing. 😛
gus,
We’ve had a Labor Government for years.
So the RC findings were a fairytale?
Frank is like Abbott. He now dismisses our institutions if they don’t give him the answer he wants.
GG
so therefore the TOR was a labor one
how does its findings then become skewed?
it does not compute
The police didn’t set the TOR, Brumby did.
Certain individuals with agendas .
No, the way certain members of the Police presented their “Evidence”.
Gus
You bloody heretic! Go back to get your marching orders from Lib headquarters! 👿
Dio
the fax ran out of paper
I’m winging it tonite
🙁
Frank
I’m sure that is true. We agree on that. Nixon obviously had some serious enemies in the Vic police due to her not being one of the boys, ie corrupt.
The RC took that into consideration though.
Diog @ 4073
Nixon’s own evidence was damning. It didn’t need anything further from enemies or anyone else.
btw
whose side is who on again
and are we debating nixon,the RC or the bushfires themselves?
gus,
You’re confusing Nixon and the plumbers of Watergate.
The CIA caused the bushfires.
GG
A new paradigm to leaks?
Gus @ 4075
Frank & GG on the side of delusion and paranoia.
Dio, me and others on the side of the evidence.
bemused
But is Whateverpedia the leaker
GG
With that recent story about Lib finances being in a parlous state and the talk of “secret accounts” I was wondering if they had been employing some plumbers…
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/libs-down-to-last-1m/story-e6freuzr-1225949088730
More like Dio and Bemused on the side of fairytales and Witchunts
gus,
Well Elvis was a helicopter dumping water on the fires. And Elvis met Nixon in the oval office. And Elvis hasn’t had many hits for awhile……..
Draw your own conclusions.
Our numbers grow daily.
Look!
Up in the sky.
Is it a bird?
Is it a plane?
Is it Superman?
No, it’s one of our poor elderly welsh bungee jumping cleaners with plumbing problems brethren (or sistren) about to unleash their incontinence on you, before bouncing back to safety.
You have been warned.
GG
elvis is now a helicopter
cyborgs gone wrong?
Gus @ 4079
All I can say on the leaks is that it will be fascinating if we ever discover the source. I suspect it may have been a composite from various parliament house staff.
Given the choice between a conspiracy and a stuff-up, go for the stuff-up every time. The stuff-up being loose conversation in front of people who should not have been privy to it.
gus,
Why doubt me now, comrade.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis_(helicopter)
whateverpedia
Ha i knew i would flush out the coven
ps My tin foil hat is more than a match for your piddling effort
GG
Ha
that aint Elvis
there are no blue suede shoes
gus,
It’s not the piddle you have to worry about.
Well I wish he’d fly back to Maccas. I wanna little mac
GG
Poop!!
Gus,
Urine trouble now.
maybe Elvis is in Myanmar singing “Hunka Hunka Burmese love”
whateverpedia
no need to bladder about it
Talking about the CIA doing bad stuff, this won’t go down too well.
Where is Psephos when you need him?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/us/14nazis.html?_r=1
Diog @ 4095
So, a deliberate program as opposed to the incompetence and indifference here that achieved a similar result.
Gus,
You’ll soon be laying prostate on the ground.
bemused
I don’t know much about what happened here. We did seem to end up with more than our fair share in SA. I found out that we are the proud hosts to one of the biggest Holocaust-denier nutter groups in the world, the Adelaide Institute.
whateverpedia
my prostate was prostrate a while back
I am glands its back
Diog @ 4098
Mark Aarons wrote a book about this called ‘Ratlines’. I haven’t read it but recall some of the publicity at the time it came out and from time to time Mark appeared on TV.
We also had a quite active Ustacha movement in Australia and the Croatian Catholic church was reportedly part of the escape route.
Gus,
The gall of you.
You are going to find that one hard to exspleen to the authorities.
Anyway, bedtime now.
Back tomorrow for a continuation of The Punfight At The PB Corral.