Essential Research: 51-49 to Coalition

The latest Essential Research survey is out, but they’ve sent it as a Word document rather than a PDF and for some reason WordPress won’t let me upload it (UPDATE: The good people at Essential have sent through a PDF). It has the Coalition maintaining its 51-49 lead for a third week running, though down a point on the primary vote to 44 per cent with Labor steady on 38 per cent and the Greens up one to 11 per cent. Other questions relate to gay marriage, which 50 per cent support but only 37 per cent consider important, and the National Broadband Network, with 69 per cent agreeing it is important that it be built.

Legal matters:

• The New South Wales government last week passed significant campaign finance reforms through parliament with the support of the Greens in the upper house, including several measures new to Australian practice which could set trends for the federal and other parliaments. Imre Salusinszky of The Australian described the bill, no doubt correctly, as “an intriguing mix of progressive public policy and political rat cunning”. To deal with its major features in turn:

Spending caps. Salusinszky’s “rat cunning” lies in the government’s decision to impose limits on electoral communication expenditure just as corporate donors fall over themselves to curry favour with a soon-to-be-victorious Coalition. More predictably and still more contentiously, the bill defines trade unions as third parties whose campaigning will not be affected by caps on party spending, even if they are affiliated with Labor (Barry O’Farrell has peddled legal advice claiming this to be unconstitutional), and treats the Coalition as a single party. Party spending in the six months up to an election will be limited to $9.3 million centrally and $100,000, amounting to another $9.3 million given there are 93 electorates. It should be noted that “electoral communication expenditure” excludes such expensive party operations as polling and other research, and there is a view abroad that this means it is not as restrictive as it should be.

Donation caps. Apart from the largely symbolic $50,000 cap on donations from the gaming industry in Victoria, these have previously been unknown in Australia. The legislation caps donations at $5000 per financial year to parties, not counting party subscriptions of up to $2000, or $2000 a year to candidates or elected members. Furthermore, donations have been banned altogether from the alcohol and gambling sectors (together with the tobacco industry at the suggestion of the Greens), which have done so much to fill NSW Labor’s coffers over the years. This move is particularly interesting in light of recent retirement announcements by Paul Gibson and Joe Tripodi, who are renowned for having built their influence as conduits for such funding. This will apply not only to hotels and the Australian Hotels Association, but also to Coles and Woolworths owing to their liquor retailing activities. However, a late agreement between Labor and the Greens saw the exemption of non-profit registered clubs.

Public funding. The parties have compensated themselves for donations caps with what will amount to a hefty increase in public funding, under new arrangements that rupture the traditional link between votes cast and funding received. Parties that score more than 4 per cent of the vote will instead be reimbursed for their electoral communication expenditure to a maximum of a bit under $10 million. Parties or candidates only running in the Council have been treated more generously at the insistence of the Greens – constitutional expert Anne Twomey says this might create legal problems as one type of political entity will be favoured over another, though George Williams says this is “arguable”.

Further north:

• AAP reports Queensland Opposition Leader John-Paul Langbroek has committed to sweeping electoral reforms if elected to government, including truth-in-advertising laws, campaign spending caps, electronic voting and a referendum on fixed terms if elected to government. In contrast to the spending cap just introduced in New South Wales, Langbroek proposes that campaign spending by (presumably Labor-affiliated) unions would count as part of Labor expenditure. In addition to these largely laudable measures, Langbroek also proposes to require that voters provide photo identification at the polling booth, citing spurious concerns about voting fraud to justify an effective restriction on the franchise to his own party’s electoral advantage.

• Jeremy Pierce of the Courier-Mail reports that a Gold Coast couple is challenging a fine for failure to vote in last year’s state election on the grounds that they did not know the election was on, having “never received one bit of information about it”. University of Queensland Law School academic Graeme Orr’s newly published The Law of Politics: Elections, parties and Money in Australia (available now from Federation Press) relates a number of unsuccessful challenges against fines brought by voters on the basis that they lacked a genuine preference between the candidates on offer, but nothing of this kind. UPDATE: Graeme Orr writes in comments: “There is case law rejecting a defense of ‘I had no information about the candidates’. They might win by arguing the general criminal law defense of honest mistake of fact.”

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.

4,251 comments on “Essential Research: 51-49 to Coalition”

Comments Page 83 of 86
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  3. B-G
    Yes I am in Adelaide. This a dreadful policy. Trying to force people to go to something by cutting off the live telecast is such a stupid idea. All it does is foster resentment. People feel they are being punished, not encouraged to follow a sport. Does cricket think it is the only kid on the block?

  4. [not agression,merely containment thru deterrence]

    Compadre, i like this New Paradise where the enemy of my enemy is also my enemy. 👿

  6. 0-50 it’s the fightback from the Aussies, if they finish with a few down for 400+ it will be all square for them, heres hoping thats the case.

  8. Doyley,

    I think you will find that Gillard & McClellan’s comments in recent days have been for domestic consumption, not International diplomacy & bridge building.

    That gets done behind the scenes, not through the media.

    Even though it was for domestic political manoeuvring, they would have been better off taking a more measured and cautious approach. IMO.

  12. scorpio,

    Even though it was for domestic political manoeuvring, they would have been better off taking a more measured and cautious approach. IMO.

    We only have to wait for the end of January to find out!

  13. [I think you will find that Gillard & McClellan’s comments in recent days have been for domestic consumption, not International diplomacy & bridge building.]

    Wikileaks is clearly not in AUstralia’s national interest. It is right for a PM to speak up against those who damage out interest.

  16. I think b_g that if you analysed who is responding how, it’s those who have had some experience of dealing with confidentiality issues versus others who haven’t.

    A bit like the local council experience – I know of many a candidate for council who has run on the platform of doing X Y and Z (which often includes ‘more open and transparent government’) who very quickly learns once elected that, no, sorry, that isn’t possible and for very good reasons.

    You can tell them all you like that that’s how it is in the lead up to the election, it’s only when they’re at the pointy end that they realise that no, they don’t want everything they’ve said behind closed doors broadcast to the world.

    I’d bet that many of those in politics presently leaping on WL from a great height – particularly those in the US – were fervent believers in open and accountable government and that, as aspiring politicians, this was one of their key platforms. That they have changed their stances since is the result of experience, not hypocrisy.

  17. It is always good to step outside the square and read articles that are written by persons in a stable state of mind. Very comforting.

    [It is dispiriting and upsetting for anyone who cares about the American tradition of a free press to see Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton and Robert Gibbs turn into H.R. Haldeman, John Erlichman and John Dean. We can only pray that we won’t soon be hit with secret White House tapes of Obama drinking scotch and slurring his words while calling Assange bad names.
    Unwilling to let the Democrats adopt Nixon’s anti-democratic, press-hating legacy as their own, Republican Congressman Peter King asserted that the publication of classified diplomatic cables is “worse even than a physical attack on Americans” and that Wikileaks should be officially designed as a terrorist organization. Mike Huckabee followed such blather to its logical conclusion by suggesting that Bradley Manning should be executed.]

    http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/12/the-shameful-attacks-on-julian-assange/67440/

  19. [zoomster
    Posted Monday, December 6, 2010 at 12:21 pm | Permalink

    I think b_g that if you analysed who is responding how, it’s those who have had some experience of dealing with confidentiality issues versus others who haven’t.]

    And I would add those who don’t think diplomats and their jobs are important.

    I remember those who cricitised Howard for megaphone diplomacy instead of more subtle forms of the art. But now…

  20. The day Rudd gets the USA to use force against China is the day the Australian economy colapses along with the dollar.!

    It makes the Lobster crisis look like chickenfeed.

    Gillard must really be worried about Rudd’s condition !Is he getting help ??
    Go Wikiileaks!
    Assange for the Nobel
    Peace Prize!!

  21. Rudd ‘posturing’ about using force on China: Wilkie
    “I suspect there was some posturing on Kevin Rudd’s place at that time,” he told ABC Radio today.

    Mr Wilkie said there was tension in the way Australia balanced its “long-term strategic economic” relationship with China and its security alliance with the US.

    “I’m wondering the degree to which Kevin Rudd was fair dinkum about that [advice],” he said.

    The government is refusing to make any comment on the leaked US diplomatic cables.
    …
    The opposition is demanding to know whether Prime Minister Julia Gillard shares the view of her predecessor.

    This is currently the top of the front page story on the SMH web site.

    I heard the interview this morning and Wilkie didn’t make a big thing of the word “posturing”. In fact he just mumbled it out, in an off-hand manner.

    Yet the newspapers are beating it up into some kind of earth-shattering drama. “If Wilkie says it (with his international diplomatic experience), then it must be true”, seems to be the meme.

    We don’t even know what Rudd meant by “force”. I don’t think he was advocating nuking Beijing, for instance. Or invading Manchuria. Was he perhaps thinking that the Yanks should attack Nanjing with a carrier task force? Probably not that either.

    Yet a few barely uttered words from an ex-spook and current back-bencher on an early morning radio show have taken the nation’s news outlets by storm. Julie Bishop is “demanding” Gillard clarify the situation. Boy, Rudd sure does sound like he’s in trouble from the marmiest of School Marms. The government could even be “reeling” by now, in “damage control”, “lurching from crisis to crisi”, trying to avoid a “debacle”… or maybe it’s even reached “catastrope” stage? I mean: if they can’t do pink batts, how can they do China?

    Was it only a few months ago that Julie Bishop was advocating an all-out diplomatic assault on China for arresting Stern Hu? It seems like just yesterday that she was smiling that “I’ve got a secret” smile at a reporter and telling-it-like-it-is on forged passports. And now Gillard is again “in trouble” for being too hard on Snookums Assange, just a down-home boy from Townsville trying to make a difference.

    Abbott can rant and rave all he likes. Bishop can out-irrelevant irrelevancy. Hockey can lie about “the greatest set of costings in the history of Australian election campaigns”. The whole lot of them can flip-flop, lie, obfuscate and say whatever they like to anyone and be forgiven for it.

    Rudd says that if we can’t get the Chinese to co-operate nicely, we should put the pressure on them to do so. Short of all-out war or other serious military confrontation, that sounds fairly sensible to me. Suddenly that’s a shock horror” scenario with demands and promises, put-downs and condemnations flying from every corner. The media and the Oppos are like a pack of pit bulls attacking a rabbit.

    Is it a slow news day? Or is Australia’s the worst, most trivial, bunch of fakes and trivializers masquerading as “The Fourth Estate” in the entire civilized world?

  22. S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 04 BEIRUT 000523

    SIPDIS

    NOFORN
    SIPDIS

    NSC FOR ABRAMS/SINGH/YERGER, STATE FOR NEA/ELA,

    EO 12958 DECL: 04/16/2018
    TAGS PTER, ECPS, PINR, LE, IR, SY
    SUBJECT: LEBANON: HIZBALLAH GOES FIBER OPTIC

    REF: BEIRUT 490

    Classified By: Charge d’Affaires Michele Sison for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d)

    SUMMARY

    ¶1. (S) Requesting a special meeting with Charge, Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh decried the establishment of a complete fiber optics network by Hizballah throughout Lebanon.

    http://46.59.1.2/cable/2008/04/08BEIRUT523.html

    Geez, even Hezbollah has a NBN!

    We must get cracking on ours without further delay!

  23. [That they have changed their stances since is the result of experience, not hypocrisy.]

    Zoom, you mean after ‘Nam and the Pentagon Papers? yes, them Yanks are slow learner, very slow.

  24. Paul J

    The aussies are going at 5 an over

    up to lunch tomorrow, there will be 110 over and Australia will be 550 at that time leaving 2 sessions to bowl the losers out

  25. It makes the Lobster crisis look like chickenfeed.

    Do chickens eat lobsters?

    Was he perhaps thinking that the Yanks should attack Nanjing with a carrier task force?

    Is Nanjing on a river? Because that’s the only way a carrier task force could get there.

  30. b_g

    I heard that. I don’t think Abbott has much time to listen to “proper” news outlets. He’s too busy keeping his endomorphins up, on his bike.

  31. [On Insiders Abbott called him AS-SANG-GEE.]

    Typical Abbott. Stranded on the road to Mandalay as usual, he thinks everyone is from Burma.

  32. I believe Hillary – one of those loudest in condemning Wikileaks – was involved in drawing up the case against Nixon.

    She also has first hand knowledge of how damaging giving free reign to rumour and innuendo can be.

  34. b_g,

    Maybe he thought it a “genuine” pronunciation. Despite his excessive bike-time, he must have heard it somewhere.

    None of that froggie crap…

  36. [She also has first hand knowledge of how damaging giving free reign to rumour and innuendo can be.]

    thank god for wikileaks then

    we can see what was said, not be told what was said

  37. [dovif
    Posted Monday, December 6, 2010 at 12:33 pm | Permalink

    Paul J

    The aussies are going at 5 an over

    up to lunch tomorrow, there will be 110 over and Australia will be 550 at that time leaving 2 sessions to bowl the losers out]

    Sounds like a plan will we let the Aussies know now or after tea?

  38. [How do you pronounce Assange?

    On Insiders Abbott called him AS-SANG-GEE.]

    Three syllables. That’s about the limit of his communication ability.

  42. @ Finns

    Saw Kim Hughes score an impressive 90 odd with a 1 broken foot and 1 bruised one against the Windies. He could hardly stand needed a runner but still bated almost as courageous as Rick Mc Coskers bating with a busted jaw against the Poms.

  45. Gos@4084,

    I interpret as “fell apart WITH China”, not “in China”. The US and China both have their core interests, e.g. a line in the sand. Cross this line and its war. However, both side is far too smart to let themselves cross these lines. Plus, I found it amusing that Australia is advising the only superpower in this world to use force against another major power.

    Gusface@4085,
    I fail to see why China needs to be contained, or indeed, how one can morally justify such containment when the US and its allies has bases all over the world. Even if such justification can be found, it is not up to a minor military power like Australia to take up this role.

    Scorpio@4087
    “present position forcefully” is very different from “deploying force”. Coming from a career diplomat and self-claimed “friend”, this is mystifying as well as amusing if not a little sad. Chinese don’t take threats very well, mind you.

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