Essential Research: 56-44 to Coalition

This week’s Essential Research shows no real change in voting intention on last week, with the Coalition up a point on the primary vote to 49 per cent, Labor and the Greens steady on 31 per cent and 11 per cent, and two-party preferred steady at 56-44. The poll also measures Bob Brown’s approval rating at 42 per cent and disapproval at 34 per cent (including very favourable figures among Labor voters of 60 per cent and 15 per cent); has 31 per cent favouring Kevin Rudd as Labor leader over 16 per cent for Julia Gillard (Gillard leads 40 per cent to 33 per cent among Labor voters); and 30 per cent favouring Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal leader with 23 per cent for Tony Abbott (Abbott leads 39 per cent to 26 per cent among Coalition voters). Further questions on the mining boom have 66 per cent believing it has benefited them “not at all”, 51 per cent supporting the mining tax (down one on mid-March) and 29 per cent opposing it (down five).

Federal preselection happenings in New South Wales:

• The NSW Liberal Party state executive has voted to dump Garry Whitaker as its candidate for Craig Thomson’s seat of Dobell. He has been replaced by Karen McNamara, a WorkCover public servant who reportedly has backing from the party’s right, who was defeated by Whitaker in the original preselection vote in December. Whitaker has since been struggling with allegations he had lived for several years without council permission in an “ensuite shed” on his Wyong Creek property while awaiting approval to build a house there.

• More proactivity from the NSW Liberal state executive in neighbouring Robertson, a seat the party was disappointed not to have won in 2010. Local branches have had imposed upon them Lucy Wicks, who herself holds a position on the executive by virtue of her status as president of the party’s Women’s Council. Wicks was identified by the Sydney Morning Herald last year as a member of the “centre right” faction associated with federal Mitchell MP Alex Hawke, which in alliance with the moderates had secured control of the state executive. Like the Dobell intervention, the imposition of Wicks occurred at the insistence of Tony Abbott – local branches in both seats have called emergency meetings to express their displeasure.

• Michelle Hoctor of the Illawarra Mercury reports Ann Sudmalis, the candidate backed by retiring member Joanna Gash, won Liberal preselection on Saturday in Gilmore with 16 votes against 10 for her main rival Andrew Guile. Rounding out the field were Alby Schultz’s son Grant, who scored four votes, and Meroo Meadow marketing consultant Catherine Shields on one. For those wondering about the small number of votes, the NSW Liberals’ preselection procedure involves branches being allocated a number of selection committee delegates in proportion to their membership, rather than a massed rank-and-file ballot.

• Imre Salusinszky of The Australian reports the Nationals are in the “‘initial stages’ of discussions with popular independent state MP Richard Torbay about endorsing him for a tilt at independent federal MP Tony Windsor in New England”. Torbay has been the independent member for Northern Tablelands since 1999, and served as Legislative Assembly Speaker during Labor’s last term in office.

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.

5,940 comments on “Essential Research: 56-44 to Coalition”

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  1. [Cabcharge transactions used to be all paper. Now they are mostly electronic, with paper as the fallback.]

    When using hire cars it is usually a voucher – they don’t have the equipment to use a card electronically. So the card (just like a CC) is put through the old fashioned slide thingee and impressed on a voucher OR you don’t have a card at all but have a preprinted (by Cabcharge) voucher book with your a/c details ptinted on it.

  3. victoria @ 5499

    bemused

    Rudd is best mates with Hockey and Slipper. Wtf!

    ‘Best mates’ is going a bit far, but I will not defend any such relationships with ‘the enemy’.

  8. [Cabcharge scan the vouchers and attach them to the back of the invoice for the month. The originals they keep.]

    Some vouchers are still like old creditcard slips (& cars have those old slide machines): original, merchant’s copy, cardholder’s copy. Slipper’s are probably his own copies. Cabs/ limos identified would have their own copies & and almost certainly scan/ copy them in case. Just a case of trying to match Slippers to cab/limo copies.

  9. [bemused

    Rudd is best mates with Hockey and Slipper]

    And effectively neutralised attacks from the Howard Government by being mates with Hockey.

  10. bemused
    [No, not me. But it was a good call.]
    Sort of. He didn’t get very far with Faine saying the writs had to have substance and no mention of the ease with which such allegations can be contrived. And that fk Roskam bringing in ‘reverse onus’ FWA stuff that went unchallenged – only because Faine wanted to move on.

    [There was another good call on unemployment and I knew that caller.]

    Didn’t catch that one.

    [Sally Warhaft was just hopeless and might as well have been representing the IPA the way she was singing from the same song sheet.]
    She’s terrible – but you know why, don’t you?
    She’s a Rudd supporter, through and through.
    Can’t say a good thing about Gillard.
    As for her “Bill Everywhere” and “Where’s Bill” crap.
    All I can say is it’s very hard to wring the neck of a radio.

    [There was an excellent call on all the IPA shills infesting the ABC. Sadly, that wasn’t me either, but he was channelling my thoughts.]
    Yep, heard that bit. And wasn’t that bloke on earlier about ‘climate vs economy’ and absolute schmuck. 😆

  11. victoria @ 5503
    bemused

    I forgot to add Julie bishop as a friend to Rudd

    Whilst I firmly believe in civility being maintained, I do not think any such friendships are appropriate.

  12. [Thought so. So the allegation was initially that they were blank. Now they are completed and signed, but Lewis reckons the signatures are dodgy, and now because the vouchers are in sequential order they are also dodgy. Got that!]

    No… the allegation was that the dockets on 27/1/2012 were signed, but otherwise blank.

  15. SK

    [The sequential nature of the dockets are not surprising nor is the use. In regional areas it is near impossible for those machines to work. Plus if he was given dockets they would have been in a sequential bundle.]

    I don’t know the facts.

    According to Mr Speers (who did remind of a hyena near some very ripe offal this morning) the booklet of dockets in this case was held by a taxi driver, not Mr Slipper. If that is the case, the sequential nature of the dockets is a bit of an unexplained mystery.

    OTOH, if Mr Slipper was the holder of the booklet of dockets then Mr Speers was talking out of his you-know-what.

    I imagine there will be considerable interest taken by the AFP into who was issued with the booklet with those serial numbers.

  16. Womble,

    What doesn’t look good for the parliament is the behaviour of Abbott and his stooges. Parliamentary precedents exist and are followed for the very sound reason that they provide a guide to behaviour and ensure a consistency that rises above the partisan positions of the moment.

    Abbott is the biggest danger to the ‘look’ of our parliament and it is a very conscious and ruthless plan to drag the standards of the House down to his own level. He knows that the only way a louse like him could ever be considered electable is to drag the whole thing down into the gutter where he can win on experience.

    The best course is simply not to play his game. Ashby’s claims looked much worse yesterday before the cabcharges were released, but even then it should have been very questionable if that was sufficient to call on the Speaker to stand down. Today, well Ashby’s claims are frankly trashed. You can’t make a false claim about something that is easily verifiable and expect your claims based on no more verification than your testimony to stand up. It would be a grave error for the Parliament to sanction the Speaker based on unverifiable claims of a person whose verifiable claims have been shown to be false. That would be the really bad look, despite what the screaming banshees in the media might want you to think.

  18. Tony Abbott about to give a speech at the IPA.

    If those free-enterprisers are fair dinkum, they will tear shreds of his entitlement handout populism.

  19. Boerwar,

    If they were the taxi drivers dockets the money would be taken from his account and paid to his account.

  20. [Abbott coming up on 24. Speech to IPA. The Abc think tank*]

    Oh yes. This is his speech about getting in coolie labour to drive down wages.

  21. From the Official guide lines

    Taxis

    Taxis may be booked directly with a taxi company. Payment can be made with a Cabcharge card issued by Ministerial and Parliamentary Services, which in most cases will electronically record details of the trip. If payment is made by any other means, (or if a Cabcharge card is processed manually by the driver), then at the conclusion of travel, the passenger should sign the driver’s travel docket detailing the location, kilometres, time and cost of the trip and ensure that these details are forwarded to Ministerial and Parliamentary Services.

    Note it is the ‘passenger’ that signs – there are valid reasons at times to give a pre-printed voucher to another person for them to use.

  22. Boerwar

    Without knowing Much about these things, could the hire company have a separate book for Clients such as Slipper, who use the service all the time?

  24. isn’t it wonderful that poliyical discourse in this country has been reduced to the sequential order of cabcharges?

    there is a saying in sport that good teams are sometimes dragged down to the level of their opposition…

  25. G’day Victoria – yep, I know – I’ve had a look at them and I can’t work it out. Although it is kind of weird. Just had another quick look and unless he has a number of different books I’d be surprised if they are his vouchers due to the numbers being different for the different cab companies

  26. Would would have thunk that Tony Abbott is addressing #IPA. Not only #IPA taken over #TheirABC now ABbott as well #auspol

  27. I hope the chater about replacing gillard is false. Gillard needs to be the labor Pm for as long as possible or until the next election.

  29. [bluegreen
    Posted Friday, April 27, 2012 at 10:57 am | Permalink
    She’s a Rudd supporter, through and through.

    Yep terrible isn’t it. Just like the rest of the country.]
    Don’t take that the wrong way, bg
    The Friday Wrap purports to have a Labor and a Coalition voice, for balance you understand.

    Sally Warhaft is the Labor voice.
    But she does nothing but can Gillard and in so doing, trashes Labor.
    And, it’s because she is firmly in the Rudd camp.

    Sorry, but I don’t want the so-called balance so biased – because of a personal affiliation of the so-called Labor voice.

  30. i well could be wrong but my understanding of the dockets in question is that they show different hire /taxi companies over the period in question, not just one company.

  31. Womble @ 5487

    [I guess the easy way to find out if they are Slipper’s vouchers or the driver’s ones is for someone on Tweeter to Tweet the man himself and ask???]

    The easier way is to look at the damn things yourself. They’re available on most news sites. They clearly have Peter Slipper’s name printed on them as they are for his account. Speers and Hadley and anyone else trying to claim these are from the driver is just proving that being a moron doesn’t preclude you from making a good living in the media (if anything it’s an advantage).

  34. @David_Speers Britney, Slipper might choose to pay and ask to pay by manual method rather than using the card to keep a paper trail.

  35. [Sally Warhaft was just hopeless and might as well have been representing the IPA the way she was singing from the same song sheet.]

    Sally and John Roskam headed off early from Faine because she had offered him a lift to the IPA meeting where Tony is appearing.

    Spose, it saved everyone from listening to more ABC one sided crap where she is a fake left rep.

  37. womble

    I have never used cabcharge, so I have absolutely no idea how it works.
    Albo said this morning that the cabcharges appear to be in order.

  39. Ratsak – agree 100% Abbott should be condemned for his approach to parliament, doesn’t mean Slipper shouldn’t stand down though.

    Also I think dismissing Ashby’s sexual harassment claim because of doubts about the cab charge part of it is a bit over the top. Sexual harassment is a serious matter and it should be tested in court – as should the events of Australia Day 2003 that have to date been brushed under the carpet by the Liberals

  40. I stopped listening to the wrap months ago. Listening. To the IPA shills was bad enough. Sally Warhaft even worse. She always sounds like she has indigestion. Miserable personality

  44. The vouchers are probably all from the same driver because he likely uses the same driver all the time, as I do when I’m going to and from the airport. I find it very hard to believe someone like Ray Hadley doesn’t make use of a preferred hire car service.

  45. Seems obvious they are swipes of Slippers card – that’s why they have his name on them.

    You get a receipt when you have a card based transaction, it shows the same detail as a manual one

  46. [Without knowing Much about these things, could the hire company have a separate book for Clients such as Slipper, who use the service all the time?]

    No more than Myers would have a separate book for frequent buyers; though, because they’re technically ComCar users, Fed Pollies’ & their trips’ details should be on records of Cab/ Limo companies doing ComCar work.

    BTW, ComCar work includes more than pollies. War Veterans travel to medical appointments (in SEQ, to Greenslopes Hospital in Briz) Commonwealth Officials, or people seconded to/ employed by the Fed Gov, from CEOs to Committee members (eligibility has been cut since I last used Fed ‘chits’.)

  47. Burgey,

    I was a regular user of cabcharge. I used the same driver and had his personal phone number. I was also issued a book of vouchers in a sequential bundle.

  49. I reckon the Libs suspected the cab charge allegations would be quickly shown to be baseless. What was needed was a nice juicy civil case to keep him from the chair.
    Tone seems to have come to that conclusion pretty quickly. Did he expect it?

  50. kezza2 @ 5528

    Sally Warhaft is the Labor voice.
    But she does nothing but can Gillard and in so doing, trashes Labor.
    And, it’s because she is firmly in the Rudd camp.

    Sorry, but I don’t want the so-called balance so biased – because of a personal affiliation of the so-called Labor voice.

    I don’t agree on your diagnosis of the reasons but I agree that Warhaft is hopeless.

    Roskam and his slimey mates are 100% partisan and can only be balanced by someone being 100% partisan the other way.

    Liberty Sanger (Sen Feeney’s wife) is not much better.

    If this is the ABCs sense of balance, they need radical re-balancing before they fall over.

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