More opinion poll carnage for Labor, this time from Morgan’s face-to-face survey of 951 lucky respondents last weekend. The headline two-party figure is 57.5-42.5, a return to the worst lows of last year. As was the case on those occasions, Labor’s deteriorating primary vote position has been accompanied by a further sag in their already weak share of minor party preferences, which as I have said many times is not what I expect to happen at the election – and indeed, it was again directly contradicted this week by Nielsen, whose respondent-allocated preference result of 56-44 suggested Labor’s preference share was about 70% compared with the 45% currently suggested by Morgan. Using the previous-election method of distributing preferences, Morgan offers a much milder figure of 53.5-46.5. Accounting for the consistent Labor lean in Morgan’s face-to-face polling, the primary vote figures are consistent with the impression from Newspoll and Nielsen: Labor on 32%, the Coalition on 44.5% and the Greens on 13%.
Plentiful preselection action:
• Barnaby Joyce has confirmed he will seek preselection for Bruce Scott’s outback Queensland seat of Maranoa, presumably in pursuit of the party leadership and deputy prime ministership. Scott, who is 69, is yet to make his intentions clear. The party’s current leader, Warren Truss, tells The Australian he will back Scott in any contest between the two, on the basis that “members are entitled to the loyalty of their leader”.
• Unions Tasmania state secretary Kevin Harkins has indicated he is still interested in a Labor parliamentary berth, after being dumped as candidate for Franklin in 2007 and frozen out for Senate preselection in 2010. The guiding hand on each occasion was Kevin Rudd, whose identification of Harkins as a totem of union ratbaggery never entirely added up. A fortnight ago, The Australian reported Rudd had been heard admitting he had confused Harkins with Kevin Reynolds, Western Australian CFMEU colossus and truly the “well-known pugilist” of Rudd’s description. Rudd insisted it was “incorrect to claim that his decision to not support Mr Harkins in 2010 was based on any confusion with Kevin Reynolds”, but Australian Mines and Metals Association chief executive Steve Knott has told The Australian: “Everyone in the IR community and up in Canberra knew that Rudd had mixed up the two Kevins. The problem for Harkins and his political ambitions was Rudd hating to be wrong.” It is now anticipated that Harkins will seek to fill the Senate vacancy to be created at the next election by the retirement of Nick Sherry. Matthew Denholm of The Australian reports a Left-backed push by Harkins would “force sitting Right faction senator Catryna Bilyk to the highly vulnerable No 3 position, potentially sparking a factional brawl”.
• Stuart Carless of the Milton-Ulladulla Times reports on the acrimonious withdrawal of two candidates for the Liberal preselection vote to choose a successor to the retiring Joanna Gash in Gilmore. Clive Brooks, owner of South Nowra business Great Southern Motorcycles and reportedly an ally of Gash, complained of “snide, horrible little people” in the local party spreading false rumours about past business failures. Shoalhaven councillor Robert Miller has apparently quit the party altogether, complaining about a letter sent to him by the party’s state director Mark Neeham which treatened him with suspension over rather mild-sounding comments to the media. Still in the field are “Shoalhaven City councillor Andrew Guile, Ulladulla resident Grant Schultz, former Kiama councillor Ann Sudmalis and Meroo Meadow marketing consultant Catherine Shields”. It is said that Gash and Guile are bitter rivals, and that she and state Kiama MP Gareth Ward “exchanged words in a heated argument at radio station 2ST last week”. I gather the subject of the argument to have been a proposal to extend to federal MPs the state government’s mooted ban on parliamentarians serving as mayors and councillors, which would upset her own plan to spend the final year of her term making the transition to the mayoralty of Shoalhaven, which she will contest at local government elections in September.
• Heath Aston of the Sun-Herald reports the Liberals will hold a preselection primary for the western Sydney seat of Greenway, which they decisively failed to snatch at the 2010 election. Liberal sources quoted in the report rate this “a calculated bid to prevent the previous candidate, Jayme Diaz, a Blacktown migration lawyer, from running again”. Diaz is reckoned a certainty under normal preselection processes because, as Aston puts it: “Mr Diaz, who arranges visas for clients, has signed many new members to the branches in Greenway and has a ‘stranglehold’ on numbers”. Diaz is a member of the area’s “large Filipino community” and has backing from the Christian Right. It is noted that the Right has suffered a string of preselection defeats of late, and that the effective imposition of another on Greenway “could flare factional tensions”.
• The Liberal preselection for the winnable Sydney seat of Reid has been won by the Tony Abbott-backed Craig Laundy, heir to and general manager of his father’s “$500 million hotel empire”. VexNews reports that Laundy’s rival for the preselection, Dai Le, a frequent preselection contestant and twice candidate for unwinnable Cabramatta, received only nine votes out of 117. VexNews also relates a complaint from an interested party about the NSW Liberals’ poor record in selecting Asian candidates (see also previous entry), which presumably comes from the Right: other accounts paint Laundy’s win as part of the previously noted string of moderate victories over candidates backed by the Right.
• Mario Christodoulou of the Illawarra Mercury reports Senator Bill Heffernan has been taking interest in the preselection for Throsby, a “sign the party believes it can snatch the once-safe Labor seat”. The only contender identified is Larissa Mallinson, “a former press adviser to Gilmore MP Joanna Gash who now works in the office of Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells”.
• Sean Nicholls of the Sydney Morning Herald reports Labor’s preselection primary to choose its candidate for the lord mayoralty has attracted seven candidates. They are Cameron Murphy, president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties and the son of Lionel Murphy; Cassandra Wilkinson, co-founder of FBi Radio; “restaurateur Jonathan Yee; a former arts adviser to Bob Carr, Vivienne Skinner; the refugee advocate Linda Scott; the former South Sydney mayor Vic Smith and the academic Damian Spruce”. Nicholls explains the procedure thus:
All 90,000 residents on the electoral roll of the City of Sydney will be sent candidate information and a ballot paper and invited to participate, including attending public debates. Voting will open on May 14 and be held online and in person at booths in the council area … Votes will be tallied and the candidate announced on June 2.
If the government succeeds in its bid to drive Clover Moore from her seat of Sydney by prohibiting parliamentarians from serving similtaneously as mayors or councillors, Labor indicates it will repeat the procedure to choose its candidate for the by-election.
George is not doing too well.
“Science does not tell us why there was a Big Bang.”
I have a feeling Richard will (already has?) get under George’s skin.
No, it is NOT part of human “to ask why we exist.”
Pell has no answers just assertions #qanda
Godwin’s Law, after 5 minutes.
Pell is desperate. 5 minutes in and he trots out Stalin and Hitler.
“That is ridiculous says Richard”
This is becoming a test of George. Tony may have to intervene.
Jones is at his supercilious best.
George Pell is no philosopher. What in tarnation do they teach these blighters in the seminaries!
23% Yes 77%
no to Qanda question for those not using app
I want to see the ratio of audience: believers v non.
Pell talking in riddles, parables and goobledygook.
Will we get on to, eventually, the essence of god?
[bluegreen
Posted Monday, April 9, 2012 at 9:39 pm | Permalink
If you weren’t such a Labor hater, I might even consider your opinion.
But economic terrorism? Gimme a break!
Kezza,
What else do you call deliberately slowing the economy by making people thousands of people redundant overnight, just to put the Reserve Bank into the corner about reducing interest rates?]
bluegreen ( or should I say Ne’er Bulge)
You’re speaking to a hardened Dole Bludger here, who’s pretty bluddy used to sitting in a corner all day, not spending a pretty penny.
I don’t agree that slowing the economy is a deliberate act to force a rate cut; nor do I agree that it will throw people out of work.
But, if it is as you say, I still don’t have a problem. I don’t have much sympathy for those who’ve voted against the govt at every turn being thrown out of work.
I’d very much like them to understand what it is actually like.
And I understand that the calls to increase the Dole by rightards are not out of any common decency but purely to make the Gillard govt renege on a surplus.
So, in the end, it’s all about politics. Not a freaking thing to do about the common good.
Wow! Jones just kneed George in the gonads.
Some inside goss on the qanda audience today. A colleague of mine got spammed by a former school mate of his to make sure he attended qanda tonight.
The facebook invite orignated from a “Daniel Hill” who I presume is the Daniel Hume that is located in this article http://www.sydneycatholic.org/news/latest_news/2010/2010719_1618.shtml
[Daniel Hill, the new director of the Archdiocese of Sydney’s University Chaplaincies]
There were 733 people invited and 87 have indicated they are attending.
The facebook invite states:
[Cardinal Pell is debating Richard Dawkins on ABC Q&A on Easter Monday (9th April).
Here is the website for the event
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/
…
This will be a terrific event.
I have been told that I can submit a list of people to attend that could get a priority when it comes to the cut.
If you do the followng by 10:30 AM tomorrow I can put your name down. It would be up to ABC to contact you to finalise your seat.
If you personally message me with your
-name,
-phone number,
-email,
-and answer yes or no to this question
– Do you support Cardinal Pell?
I can pass it on if you do this.
]
The most recent facebook comment was
[Let’s pray hard everybody!]
The ABC should have declared that the audience is stacked with barrackers rather than passive observers. Its quite unprofessional really.
Tony Jones, as feared, is doing theatre.
Pell: Enough rope? #qanda, pitiful really
Bk.
Yep, smacked pell between the eyes.
(Any Any cost of retooling will be bore by the taxpayer not the Government.)
Yes i meant the business owner, so i suppose we both mean the same.
2
2
Dawkins has already won.
Dawkins with Krauss next week. Hope it’s public.
Kezza
To get the budget into surplus thousands of government jobs will need to be made redundant immediately. This is the direct jobs that will be lost.
The secondary jobs that will go will be the suite of service jobs that will go fromt he shock of cutting ten billion dollars worth of payments or programs.
On the dole payment. For a single person the payments are diabolical. They should be increased.
Pell now trotting out slogans.
And being derogatory.
Pell is clearly a catholic church political heavyweight and a catholic church intellectual lightweight.
He is the Mark Arbib of the Catholic Church.
Pell says one sentence and gets a massive cheer from a section of the audience. Obvious planted audience members.
What is this – a 2010 News Limited-sponsored town hall meeting at Rooty Hill?
Rooty Hill
🙂
Walk through any children’s hospital and tell me if there is a god
George is not a competent pursuing views on a panel.
Resorting to catechism is not a weapon.
Good on him for showing up.
Pell does not show much true christianity to me. He is as aggressive and denigration seems to roll easily off his tongue.
George Pell does not worry about human antecedents. That’s a newie!
So Pell says “humans don’t come from apes, but from neanderthals… probably.”
Haha.
Pell is demonstrating why so many children leave the faith with which they were inculcated.
Oh Pell….. Shut up and save what faith your followers have left.
Pell = gibberish!
George is doing Adam and Eve v Everyman.
If you know your English literature you will know how fatuous that is.
George has no idea about the relevance of the literature he cites.
If you crit George please give the whyfore!
[bluegreen
Posted Monday, April 9, 2012 at 10:00 pm | Permalink
Kezza
To get the budget into surplus thousands of government jobs will need to be made redundant immediately. This is the direct jobs that will be lost.
The secondary jobs that will go will be the suite of service jobs that will go fromt he shock of cutting ten billion dollars worth of payments or programs.
On the dole payment. For a single person the payments are diabolical. They should be increased.]
As I understand it, the thousands (hundreds, actually) of govt jobs to go are those where the programs have already ended. The contracts will not be renewed.
I don’t think you understand that the stimulus can’t last forever. If the govt keeps prime pumping the market, it will never stand up on its own two feet.
Sure, as I said, the dole needs to be increased. But, hey, why would you do it in a year when the budget has to, politically, come into surplus.
make no mistake, the Coalition couldn’t give a rat’s arse. They’re just pressuring the govt so that it won’t be able to come up with a surplus.
It would be no different, or infinitely worse, under a Coalition govt.
So, terrorism! No fkn way.
Pragmatism. Sure. All the way.
If you want to keep running down the Labor govt, all you’ll end up with is a Coalition govt. Isn’t it in your constituents (those you deem to be fighting for) best interests to keep fighting for a Labor govt than using the most extreme language?
At last a decent question.
Q “evidence for the existence of god.” Q for George. That is a just plain silly question.
So when does the pink unicorn appear?
There is a basic problem with this QandA: Richard is a debater and George is not.
Pell is totally doddering.
This is the most humble day of his life.
Thanks for the response Ive got 🙂
[bluegreen
Posted Monday, April 9, 2012 at 10:02 pm | Permalink
Pell is clearly a catholic church political heavyweight and a catholic church intellectual lightweight.
He is the Mark Arbib of the Catholic Church.]
Oh, another Katharine Murphy on the job. So side-splittingly funny.
Must book the ambulance for a quick stitch.
What I mean is, pffft.
That’s the sort of comment I’d expect from a paid-up member of the Coalition.
And you wonder why I consider you to be anti-Labor.
God, arguing with you’re local liberal MP is pulling my hair out.
Pell’s arguments sound as bad as a Liberal Politicians 🙂
Tony Jones is asking some acute questions of George and giving him time for the responses.
See what happens when you don’t shag 😛