Weekend miscellany

No Morgan poll this week. There is the following however:

• ReachTel continues to pump out the Queensland state automated phone polls. Perhaps emboldened by a recent effort pointing to a 27 per cent anti-Labor swing in Stretton, they have this week targeted two safe Labor seats and elicited similarly dramatic results. A survey of 384 respondents in the seat of Ipswich is fully as bad for Labor as the Stretton poll, showing a 26 per cent swing and a win for LNP candidate Ian Berry over Labor incumbent Rachel Nolan by a margin of 9.4 per cent. In the Brisbane seat of Bundamba, a poll of 371 respondents found a 20 per cent swing which would all but eradicate Labor member Jo-Ann Miller’s margin. Katter’s Australian Party was on double figures in both seats. Last week ReachTel published a poll of 366 respondents in Ferny Grove which showed a 15 per cent swing, easily enough to account for Labor member Geoff Wilson’s margin of 4.3 per cent. It should be noted however that ReachTel is a new outfit using a methodology which is yet to prove its worth, and all the swings mentioned are well over the 13 per cent indicated by recent Newspoll and Galaxy polling.

• John Ferguson of The Australian reports polling by the Victorian Liberal Party shows it poised to win not only the Labor-held marginals of Deakin, Corangamite and La Trobe, but also recording primary votes of 50 per cent and 48 per cent in relatively safe Bruce and Chisholm. Particularly difficult to believe is a funding from Bruce that “Julia Gillard had a minus 22 per cent favourability rating with Mr Abbott at plus 2 per cent”, which compares with Nielsen’s recent Victorian results of minus 13 and minus 25. Ferguson’s report further says that former members Phil Barresi (voted out in 2007 and again unsuccessful in 2010) and Jason Wood (voted out in 2010) are considering comebacks in Deakin and La Trobe. Local councillor Tim Smith is another possible starter in Deakin, and Ernst & Young partner John Nguyen “would be backed by many local members” in Chisholm. John Roskam of the Institute of Public Affairs and lawyer John Pesutto are mentioned as being likely preselection aspirants, though it is unclear in relation to which seats.

• Michael McKenna of The Australian reports “lobbyist and former 2007 Liberal candidate for the seat of Brisbane Ted O’Brien and Sunshine Coast businesswoman Peta Simpson” will join Mal Brough in the LNP preselection contest for Peter Slipper’s seat of Fisher, with Brough “expected to easily win”. In the period between his appearance at a local function with Kevin Rudd and his defection from the party, the LNP state executive was considering having Slipper deposed at a snap December 19 preselection, which would have prevented the state election campaign clashing with any move by him to pursue internal appeals processes. However, this failed to take into account that many of Brough’s local branch “recruits” (according to The Australian, “since returning to the party in December last year, Brough has doubled the membership in the Fisher LNP branch to more than 1000”) would have been unable to participate due to the rule requiring 12 months’ membership. According to The Australian, it was “suspected that Slipper may have orchestrated the Rudd visit to entrap the LNP into calling an early preselection to defeat Brough”. Following Slipper’s defection, it is now clear the preselection will now be held after the state election.

• Sean Nicholls of the Sydney Morning Herald reports on the latest exchange in the hundred years war between NSW Liberal Right faction rivals David Clarke and Alex Hawke. The Clarke faction (the “hard” Right) has unsuccessfully sought a Supreme Court injunction to prevent the Baulkham Hills and Castle Hill Young Liberal branches from participating in the preselection for Hawke’s federal seat of Mitchell. These were the very same branches involved in a famous episode before the previous election when the unanticipated arrival of 40 Clarke supporters prompted Hawke to call the police. The Herald report further relates that “up to a dozen” NSW MPs have defected from Clarke to Hawke’s “centre right”, among them Wollondilly MP Jail Rowell and upper house MP Matthew Mason-Cox, as they were “understood to be unhappy over their treatment by Mr Clarke and his colleague, Marie Ficarra”. This is presumably one of the reasons the Clarke candidate in Mitchell, Robert Picone, is not considered much of a chance.

• John Ferguson of The Australian reports on a widening in the long-simmering battle over Victorian Liberal Senate preselection. Previously the issue had been whether the number two candidate from 2007, Helen Kroger, would suffer demotion at the expense of the number three, Scott Ryan, who has since been promoted to a more senior parliamentary position. However, a split in the Costello-Kroger faction is now jeopardising the position of the number one candidate, Mitch Fifield. A Liberal source is quoted accusing Fifield of “engineering” Ryan’s push against his factional colleague Kroger, prompting the latter’s supporters to contemplate securing her position by moving to depose Fifield from the top of the ticket. With the Liberals thought likely to win three seats in the current electoral environment, Fifield’s enemies are said to be canvassing possible challenges from John Roskam and, perhaps a little fancifully, Peter Reith.

• A belated note, after much back and forth, about last week’s highly unfortunate Crikey system failures. I am delighted to be able to announce that it’s Ray Hadley’s fault. A story published by Crikey last Tuesday led to a mammoth spray against Tim Flannery and Crikey on Ray Hadley’s program on 2GB the following morning. As a result of Hadley’s outburst, Crikey received a massive spike in traffic to the website – so much so that the site’s servers could not handle the traffic increase and melted down two days in a row. Of course, these have not been Crikey’s only outages, and the broader difficulty remains of the system’s incapacity to cope under pressure. Management are now undertaking server cost analysis and preparing for IT/bandwidth increases.

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.

1,800 comments on “Weekend miscellany”

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  1. vic

    http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/forgotten-man-julia-gillard-praises-every-labor-leader-since-1940-except-kevin-rudd/story-e6freuzr-1226212731618

    I mentioned this yesterday it was a silly move not to include Rudd in that list. We can criticise the media but why give them another opportunity to dis the Party. Silly!

    I read the comments from Oakes on the PM’s speech it wasn’t great. People want some passion like Doug Cameron does in spades.

  2. I thought Julia’s speech was just full of empty slogans – if this was meant to be the oratory to firmly entrench her as leader until the next election, it didn’t hit the mark.

  3. [Regarding Kohler, I agree with BB but would also point out, as I have said before, that Kohler is NOT an economist, he is a journalist. I think it is distinctly possible he got his piece so badly wrong through simple human error, and is too embarrassed to admit it. Ego and ignorance could explain the whole thing.]

    I disagree with your conclusions.

    Alan Kohler wrote a rather nasty and sarcastic piece about MYEFO. It was also very self-serving, as he crowed that he had “told” Swan of all the “troubles” outlined in the article months ago, at Budget time. He used Swan’s name disparagingly and insultingly, calling him “Swanny” several times. He used the word “bozos” to describe Treasury. The whole thing was vicious and sour.

    Swan took the trouble to provide a detailed rebuttal of Kohler’s conclusions, pointing out that he had made incorrect assumptions for some of his metrics and had read some key tables in the MYEFO document wrongly, or perhaps had got figures from one column mixed up with figures from other columns. In other words, Kohler presented the MYEFO document as saying something it did not say and then wrote a dummy spit based on these wrong readings.

    Swan was polite and measured in his response, in contrast to Kohler who just ranted.

    So, we have a journalist at the ABC writing one thing. We have the Treasurer of Australia pointing out that the journalist got his basic figures, and hence his conclusions wron, as a matter of factual accuracy. The mistakes were not minor. They went to the heart of Kohler’s argument. I would have thought that both articles should stand together, or (as the ABC usually does) links to the contrary article should have appeared with each.

    Alan Kohler is not the editor of The Drum. Someone at the ABC has that job (Jonathan Green, I think). Kohler does not decide what prominence to give to his article in the banners. The editor does.

    As is stands the ABC’s The Drum web site has let stand on it own a nasty and sarcastic article which is heavily and comprehensively disputed by the government in serious and measured tone.

    Wayne Swan’s position is relegated to the role of “just one opinion”, while Kohler’s article is given major prominence. Yet it is just opinion too, and hotly disputed opinion at that, on a subject of national importance.

    This is no spat about gay marriage, or tobacco laws, or a quibble about nuances of minor policy. This is a fundamental disagreement concerning the economy of the nation as a whole, yet only one point of view – an impertinent, sarcastic, nasty and WRONG piece by Alan Kohler – is left for the readers.

    The other, a serious rebuttal has disappeared, or is very difficult to find. Kohler’s piece is featured on the main page of the ABC News site as well as in a rotating kinetic banner (with photograph) at The Drum. Swan’s piece is difficult to find, if you can find it at all.

    To give Swan the right of reply and then, next day, to bury that reply out of prominent sight, is a travesty of the much vaunted “balance” we hear so much about at the ABC. Balance seem to only work one way at Ultimo, where if one of their journalists appears to have got it wrong, it must be the rest of the world that made the mistake.

    This is not balance, not even a vague impression of balance.

  4. seems crazy to leave Kevin out of the speech, very disrespectful – why do it??? He was the right person to beat Howard at the time and did it brilliantly. Deserves credit for that – sure he lost the plot pretty quickly but you can’t write him out of history

  5. MTBW: It’s to Kevin Rudd’s credit that he was standing in the front row yesterday, smiling and clapping her speech, he’s more a gentleman than others in that senior party organisation.
    This conference is as stage managed as the last one – there’s nothing spontaneous about any of it, despite Gillard’s protestations otherwise.

  7. [I thought Julia’s speech was just full of empty slogans – if this was meant to be the oratory to firmly entrench her as leader until the next election, it didn’t hit the mark.]

    Back to your old self, TLM. Glad to see some things don’t change. I was getting concerned…

  9. Sky News looks to be covering at well – I don’t have APAC unfortunately

    Sky runs the line that the debate is delayed because the numbers are being crunched

  10. Phil Coorey on the numbers

    [
    When the ALP national conference debates gay marriage this morning, it is expected to endorse a conscience vote by a majority of eight to 12 votes among the 400 delegates, sparing Ms Gillard a damaging defeat because she has called publicly for a conscience vote. But the policy platform changes, which are being driven by the Left, were unstoppable because a large proportion of the Right was intent on backing them as well.
    ]

    http://www.smh.com.au/national/gillard-reasserts-control-20111202-1obhe.html

  11. [Not sure why this rabbit is running?]

    Because you insisted on 27 November as the latest possible date for a HoR election – a Wednesday.

  12. BB

    I agree Kohler was on a rant on this occasion, and was biased. I also agree that the lack of links to a balanced reply probably breached the ABC’s supposed editorial rules (which I also think they often fail to follow in on-line pieces). But I think that Kohler did write from his genuinely held beliefs, which were based on ignorance in this case.

    That being said, I don’t even read Kohler much these days for those reasons. As usual Ross Gittins gives a much more balanced view of the MYEFO here, and a dig at one of his peers:
    [The most remarkable thing about this week’s mini mini-budget is how many words the media could spill without clarifying a rather important question: how will it affect the economy?…

    So, measured the Reserve Bank way, the ”underlying” stance of fiscal policy remains pretty contractionary in both years – and, after you look through the reprofiling, not greatly changed.

    This stance seems appropriate, remembering the economy is close to full employment and monetary policy can be eased (interest rates cut) should that prove necessary.]
    http://www.smh.com.au/business/theres-always-a-few-twists-on-road-to-surplus-20111202-1ob20.html

  13. BB 53

    One more thing – I do strongly agree with you that the handling of the stories by the ABC on-line team – no links, getting rid of them quickly – was clearly biased. I think the editors of the ABC on-line news site are a bigger problem than Kohler.

  16. The conscience vote was always going to get up – the right wing factional powerbrokers are looking after “their girl”.

  17. A final comment on economic reporting (this time in the USA) before I go do the shopping. Fox’s reporting of US unemployment was indeed bad. In the context of the usual movements in unemployment numbers, rounding off 8.6% to 9% was an appalling deception. Even worse, they failed to report the number of jobs created, which is always the key figure.

    That being said, I have very little (no) sympathy for Obama, Geithner and Bernanke on the reporting of the US economy. IMO their management of it has been poor, and they deliberately hide the evidence of that when they can. The official measure of US unemployment is highly misleading, because it only counts those getting benefits, which cut out after a year. So all long term unemployed are ignored.

    A more accurate measure of unemployment is “U6 unemployment” which counts it as the ABS would. By that measure US unemployment is 16%, which is shockingly high. Krugman calls it “the Great Recession”, because it is nearly as bad as the Great Depression, and only a higher starting wealth level this time sees people not starving. Though many US citizens are now so poor they are going hungry regularly.

  18. [“their girl”]

    I’m still amazed that in 2011 there are still men who seek to denigrate a woman’s achievements by referring to her as though she was 5 years old.

  19. Final comment, like many here, I really hope the ALP manages to get a positive outcome on both gay marriage and voluntary euthanasia through not only the national conference, but parliament. There are principles of justice and liberty at stake, not just votes.

  23. i watched replay of LL last night. Howes and Kroger. Kroger stated several times that the biggest mistake Labor made this year was to keeping JG as PM this year. Kroger reckons Abbott will lead the Libs to the next election.

  32. interesting line that it should be an intellectual argument rather than an emotional one

    i think both clearly say equality is the right answer

  35. Oakes in the Herald Sun is a write off today – binned.

    Carney, as always, a write off in the Age – binned.

    Thank God for PB with it’s comaraderie, good humour and moral support – not to mention a good supply of links to the articles that ARE worth reading. Many thanks to the PBs who regularly post them.

  36. Watched Howes/Kroger on Lateline last night

    Ali Moore said Abbott was a lot more subdued than usual with Tony Jones on Wednesday. Michael Kroger agreed and had no idea why.

    As I said, even though Jones failed to nail him on any policy, he did manage to knock the psychological stuffing out of him in that interview

  37. spur212

    Howes was very firm and clear as to his position. Kroger kept saying that Howes was delusional. Kroger reckons the Libs are onto a winner because they are so far in front in the polls. Should the polls go south, what then?

  39. [De Bruyn is one of Julia’s main backers, don’t forget that.]

    De Bruyn also backed Rudd for the leadership as well.

    If Rudd didn’t have such woeful people skills he would still be leader.

  41. TLM

    what an absolute piss poor excuse.

    I was willing to let you off on the ‘girl’ comment but to blame teh Right for forcing you to use the term is just weak.

  47. [sspencer_63 Stephen Spencer
    Joe de Bruyn arguing “ethnics” won’t vote for party that supports gay marriage. All GLBT people are Anglos?]

    It was a very poor speech from De Bruyn. Someone tweeted that if you closed your eyes you could hear BA Santamaria speaking.

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