Victorian election: week two, part one

John Brumby and Ted Baillieu went head-to-head on Friday for a low-rating and soon-to-be-forgotten leaders debate. Milanda Rout of The Australia wrote approvingly that Ted Baillieu “took a risk and showed he had some political backbone”, by “throwing insults and delivering the best and funniest lines of the debate”. John Ferguson of the Herald Sun thought Baillieu’s dithering over preferences meant he “won the theatre, but lost the politics”. Shaun Carney of The Age believed Brumby suffered from lack of experience – this was his first leaders debate, as there wasn’t one when he ran against Jeff Kennett in 1996 – while James Campbell of the Sunday Herald Sun faulted Brumby for “staring statesmanlike into the distance and talking about the future”. If you’d prefer to make up your own mind, you can watch it on iView.

Elsewhere:

• Tim Colebatch of The Age makes the unarguable assertion that Ted Baillieu’s efforts to get his message out have been “drowned out by factional opponents beating their drum to insist that the Liberals should not direct preferences to the Greens”. He also casts an eye over the Liberals’ recent record in Tasmania, the only case study where the Liberals have pursued the strategy of privileging Labor over the Greens advocated by John Howard and Helen Kroger:

Tasmania went to the polls in March. The Liberals topped the vote, but both sides ended up with 10 seats and the Greens with five. Liberal leader Will Hodgman had first rights but, under pressure from right-wing powerbroker Senator Eric Abetz, refused to negotiate with the Greens. Labor leader David Bartlett went ahead and did so. So Labor and the Greens now have a coalition government, and it’s working well. The federal election saw the Liberal vote in Tasmania slump to 39 per cent after preferences — the party’s lowest vote in any state since World War II. Opinion polls show a collapse in Liberal support at state level. And The Mercury reports that Hodgman has now taken on Abetz for control of the party, declaring: “We cannot give away the middle ground. I will fight to make sure that doesn’t happen, even if it costs me my job.”

• Former federal Wills independent Phil Cleary has confirmed he will run in the seat of Brunswick. This further complicates the contest between Labor candidate Jane Garrett and Cyndi Dawes of the Greens, with Cleary making no secret of his intention to direct preferences to the latter. The seat is being vacated by the retirement of Labor member Carlo Carli.

• David Rood of The Age tells of “secret party research” from the ALP telling a familiar tale of ongoing inner-city drift to the Greens. The report found the most potent campaign remedy would be pamphlets trumpeting the fact that the Greens had voted with the Liberals 69 per cent of the time in parliament, as distinct from an existing strategy of “promoting the party’s stance on climate change and other progressive issues like social housing”.

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.

408 comments on “Victorian election: week two, part one”

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  1. Lucky if there’s a couple of thousand people watching the B/B forum on Sly News or the Hun website. It will be take of the two dailies tomorrow that matters. Brumby was the same old Brumby last Friday. Ted B was at least fired up. The Libs seem to be holding fire on policies. The response to Brumby’s is pretty much: why now, why so late?

  4. fjms,

    Total bollocks.

    Democracy was banned because he refused to follow clear instructions on posting protocol from the moderator.

    Nothing to do with his content. Simply a refusal to follow directions.

    William runs a very robust blog. Posters that get banned could be miffed but should never be surprised

  11. Thanks GG for providing the link at: http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2010/11/08/newspoll-52-48-to-coalition-2/comment-page-18/#comment-679809 to Andrew Elder’s post where he rips into Paul Howes.

    Being interested to see what else he comments on at his blog I came across his post, 29 October 2010, “Why the Liberals should preference the Greens”.
    [There is no reason why the Liberals should engage in a pas-de-deux with the ALP. Labor only do this in moments of weakness, and the Liberals never benefit. It becomes hard for a Liberal opposition to become a Liberal government when they’ve cut so many deals for quick, little wins; some Lib staffer gets a public sector job while Liberal frontbenchers never become ministers. If the Liberals preference Labor and Labor preferences the Liberals, how do they create a competitive advantage? Brumby’s bellowing at the Victorian Liberals, demanding that they preference his government, reminds me of Morris Iemma demanding that Barry O’Farrell back him on electricity privatisation. For Baillieu to accede would be the end of him.]
    http://andrewelder.blogspot.com/

  12. Careful of associating yourself with being boldly proud, you may have to join the greens. We would, of course, welcome you proud or not. Hell we’d even let you marry anyone you loved.

  14. Pegasus,

    Elder is always a good read. He’s basically a traditional Lib and hates the party as it has evolved and is particularly scornful of the right.

    His excoriation of journalists and their bad writing and unprofessionalism is legendary.

    He has a go at Labor from time to time as well. (This is the when his writing is weakest).

  17. fjms 49

    I think you have missed my point. I am just saying that no side of politics is the sole repository of wisdom, not even the Greens. Putting a “Greens” hat on, I will say that it was most unfortunate that the “Greens” Candidate Ralph Nader in 2000 almost certainly prevented Al Gore from being President, instead installing George Bush.

    I want the Coalition to not form government in Victoria – to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln :

    “If I could save Victoria from a Coalition Government without losing any inner city electorates I would do it, and if I could save it by losing all the inner city electorates I would do it; and if I could save it by losing some and winning others I would also do that. What I do about inner city electorates, and the Greens, I do because I believe it helps to save Victoria; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save Victoria.”

  20. [The Liberal Party are the only party that stand up for true liberal values.]

    Well, that’s a bit of a no-brainer. Actually, the current Liberal Party’s definition of liberal is conservative and under Abbott is heading too far to the right. Presumably that’s why you think we are all too far to the left, and your definition of far left is “Green”.

  22. Wasn’t D@W banned for being a boring, monomaniacal nutter with an extreme obsession with the Greens and preferencing, who repeatedly breached moderation guidelines due to paranoid tendencies?

  23. fjms
    [Labor have not supported a White Australia policy certainly not since the 1950’s ]
    I know that, but the Labor Party is much older than the 1950s. I have stood under the Tree of Knowledge in Barcaldine (before some moron poisoned it!) and reflected on more than 100 years of Labor Party tradition. I celebrate the good but acknowledge the bad.

    ps – locals in Barcaldine have told me that the Labor Party, such as it was, was actually formed under a different tree!

  24. Its an interesting group of lies that the neo conservatives are running and they will surely collide. Take the Tea party, they go on about the nanny state and ‘get the government out of my life’ mantra, whilst still stradling the bed, (no gay marraige), trying to control womens bodies (abortion roll back) and keeping control of how people die (euthanasia) all held together with some low level dog whistling, read racism, anti muslim paranoia and homophobia,. Oh and yes anti Green conspiracies.
    Whoa and they think they can get away with that in the long term. Ha.
    If it wasn’t for the amazing support of the neo media they would be a low level rump in some trailer park in texas.

  26. Barking

    [ Its an interesting group of lies that the neo conservatives are running and they will surely collide. Take the Tea party, they go on about the nanny state and ‘get the government out of my life’ mantra]

    Right you are. The funny thing about the Tea party folk is that they are quite happy to accept cheques from the government. They just don’t think the cheques should go to the ‘wrong’ sort of people. You know – people who happen to have different values or beliefs… or skin colour.

  27. This is definitely not a pro-green website, it is definitely a pro-Labor website

    It is also not a very democratic website as anytime anyone bad mouths the ALP, they get shouted down, so Democracy is not at work on this website.

    As for the Liberals being too right wing, that is because the ALP is so right wing that you can hardly tell the 2 apart. As I said previously, when Malcolm was leader of the Liberals, the Liberals was to the Liberal side of the ALP.

  28. As Paul Gibson said today, the ALP does not stand for anything anymore, they stand for what the poll and focus group said …. Kevin Rudd won an election by saying everything the focus group told him, which made him Liberal lite, he helped moved the ALP so far to the right, that it took all the fun out of politics

    but it is what we have in Australia at the moment, 2 conservative party, trying to out-conservative each other, and with the rest of the world moving to the right, ie USA, UK, France etc … the ALP will keep moving right

    As Paul Gibson said, the ALP stands for nothing today

  29. dovif,

    When you first posted, you would simply post Liberal supporting articles you probably gleaned from Liberal HO. Which was pretty boring and made you an easy target for ridicule. Now, at least you enter the debate which is good. I’m sure William would like some more pro Lib posters. The ones we get seem to be strident nutters that rarely survive the sustained scrutiny that posters get here.

    The Greens would like think they dominate PB. But, they think with 10% support, they rule the world.

  30. [
    Brown was only formally elected as leader in 2005. Uncontested for a whole five years, in which time their vote has….what, doubled? WHY would anyone contest the leadership?
    ]

    juffy, indeed. Which backs up what I was saying. For a Greens supporter to claim “Unlike other dictatorial partys The Greens don’t do leader worship” is laughable. Since Bob Brown formally became leader of the Greens how many leaders have the Labor and Liberal parties gone through? All parties “do leader worship” at some point. To claim the Greens don’t is silly

  34. GG

    I mainly post The Australian articles and some SMH articles here because they bring a really funny response from the ALP masses here.

    I have actually been posting here for a long time before that.

    The Australian articles are biase, but a lot of it was reporting facts too, but it just so happen that the ALP was encountering a lot of issues. They are occassionally quite tough on the Liberals too, but it always get a good reaction here… so I am a stirrer and I could not help it.

  37. madcyril

    You have not mentioned the challenge for Greens Deputy leader after the 2010 election (then again, none of the Greens wanted to mention it either!) :

    SHY one, Milne five.

    So SHY has at least one loyal follower.

  40. [fjms
    … a general winge ending with….
    The comments published here must be read knowing that it is extreamly bias in its content.]

    Remember the incident well, D&W was told to stop using bold, he didn’t, he got banded, I see from your later posts your trying to go down the same path. It’s hard to believe there are two people that are so stupid.

    Conclusion: D&W has a new name and it is fjms.

  41. I have been a pollbludger reader and poster for nearly 5 years and it has been always obvious to me that this site has a very strong left wing ALP and Greens bias.
    Any other party supporters who post here are usually ridaculed or put down. Of course the moderator could act to keep the discussion balanced, but he chooses not to.
    This is not a site for much open and honest political discussion.
    And thats sad.

  43. No wounder the LIB/LAB/Murdoch Party want to avoid scrutiny and debate,

    here is one of the reasons

    http://www.environmentvictoria.org.au/content/state-election-scorecard

    [To help you make an informed vote on Saturday, 27 November, Victoria’s leading environment groups have assessed the current policies of the major state political parties on seven key issues like climate change, healthy rivers, national parks and forest protection. Here’s how they measured up.]

  45. Does it have to be so left wing to balance the obvious Lib bias of the NEWS/ Murdock Press? Surely it can be balanced to to have a sensible political discussion where all points of view can be respected. I am not a liberal, but i admire Glen for his mostly solo effort to put the Lib view.
    A good balanced political discussion is in the bet interests of everybody, and democracy.

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