The always reliable James J relates in comments that the latest Newspoll result is 56-44, with primary votes of 31% for Labor, 48% for the Coalition and 11% for the Greens. Julia Gillard’s ratings have gone backwards, her approval down three to 27% and disapproval up two to 61%, and her 39-38 lead as preferred prime minister last time has become a 39-36 deficit. Tony Abbott is up a point on approval to 32% and down one on disapproval to 57%. UPDATE: Newspoll also reports 32% find Labor most to blame for the asylum seeker impasse against 28% for the Coalition and 16% for the Greens; 66% believe Labor at least partly to blame against 60% for the Coalition and 57% for the Greens; and 37% think the Coalition best to handle the asylum seeker issue (down 10% on last time), with Labor on 17% (down 4%) and “others” on 13% (up 1%).
The weekly Essential Research poll also has the Coalition’s two-party lead at 56-44, where it has been for six successive weeks, from primary votes of 31% for Labor (down a point for the second week in a row), 49% for the Coalition (steady) and 11% for the Greens (up one). There are further questions in asylum seekers, of which the most illuminating is the findings that 60% believe the government is too soft, the carbon tax (31% say they have noticed an increase in costs, 54% say they haven’t) and the European economic crisis. We have also had Roy Morgan publish results from its last two weekends of regular face-to-face surveying, which interestingly shows the Greens up 4.5% to 14.5%, their best result since February and equal best result ever from this series. Both parties are down on the previous fortnight, Labor by 3% to 29.5% and the Coalition 2.5% to 45.5%. The Coalition’s two-party lead is down from 54.5-45.5 to 54-46 on previous election preferences, but up from 56.5-43.5 to 57.5-42.5 on respondent-allocated preferences.
Developments:
• NSW ALP state secretary Sam Dastyari will present a motion to the party’s state conference on the weekend calling for the party to put the Greens behind the Coalition on preferences at the federal election. Despite the focus of some news reports, this would mean little with respect to the lower house: Labor can be relied on to make the final count in all seats which matter to the Greens, meaning their preferences are not distributed (the key question remains what the Liberals will do, which will most likely be to follow the Victorian party’s example at the state election and put them last). However, it could come at a very high cost to Labor as well as the Greens by delivering to the Coalition Senate seats which would otherwise stay “left”. In 2010 the Greens polled well enough that would have won seats in each state in any case, having scored quotas in their own right in Victoria and Tasmania, and close enough to it elsewhere that preferences from left-wing micro-parties would have make up the difference. However, it would only take a gentle swing to cost them seats in New South Wales and Western Australia without Labor preferences, which on anything like present form would mean results in those states of four seats for the right against two for Labor (as well as making life all but impossible for the Greens in South Australia, given the complication of Nick Xenophon).
• The most excellent pseph blog Poliquant has analysed the likely impact of Labor preferencing the Greens list with reference to current state-level opinion polling, which suggests it would result in 4-2 rather than 3-3 left-right splits in Western Australia and possibly New South Wales, and that a 4-2 split looms in Queensland regardless of preferences. In each case, one of the four right-wing seats would go to a minor party, obvious possibilities being Katter’s Australian Party in Queensland and the Nationals in Western Australia. Poliquant also offers a review of the lower house effects, which argues the Greens stand to lose a share of anti-major party protest voters whose preference flows are not especially favourable to Labor.
• James McGrath, former Liberal federal deputy director, LNP campaign manager at the Queensland state election and chief advisor to London lord mayor Boris Johnson, has dropped a bombshell by nominating for LNP preselection in Peter Slipper’s seat of Fisher. His decision to take on the presumed front-runner, Mal Brough, is said by Michael McKenna of The Australian to have “the support of LNP powerbrokers, increasingly concerned about Mr Brough’s involvement in an anti-corruption probe and role in the sexual harassment case against Mr Slipper”. McGrath had long been considered the likely successor to Alex Somlyay when he retires as member for the neighbouring Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax at the next election. His formidable reputation as a political strategist received a considerable boost by the state election result, despite his having been sacked from his job with Boris Johnson in 2008 after telling a black activist that immigrants should “go if they do not like it here”. Other known candidates for the preselection are Peta Simpson, director of a local recruitment agency (who has Nationals connections and is backed by Brough foe Barnaby Joyce); Richard Bruinsma, a former adviser to Slipper; and Andrew Wallace, a barrister.
• A warning from acting LNP president Gary Spence that expulsion awaits those who comment to the media on the party’s internal affairs has been interpreted as a knock to Clive Palmer. After failing to nominate as threatened for the Lilley preselection last week, Clive Palmer told Lateline he had held off at the insistence of Tony Abbott. Palmer has given the publicity wheel further spins by announcing he plans to run for another seat, indicating Fairfax or Kennedy might fit the bill. This echoed a report from Steven Scott of the Courier-Mail that “some LNP figures” were pushing him in the direction of Kennedy, presumably secure in the knowledge that he would face a humiliating defeat at the hands of Bob Katter. Tony Abbott continues to present thinly disguised arguments against a Palmer candidacy, citing the need for candidates to be “there first thing every morning at the bus stops and the railway stations”, and for members to treat their parliamentary vocations as full-time jobs.
• The LNP’s burst of preselection activity has including the endorsement of its first three candidates for Queensland’s eight Labr-held seats, including confirmation Malcolm Cole will again run against Graham Perrett in Moreton. Cole’s CV includes a period as a journalist at the Courier-Mail and AAP, and later as a staffer to Alexander Downer and former Senator and factional chieftain Santo Santoro. In Oxley, which Bernie Ripoll holds for Labor on a margin of 5.8%, the LNP has also preselected Andrew Nyugen, a 28-year-old policy adviser to Brisbane lord mayor Graham Quirk. The choice of a candidate so named in the electorate formerly held by Pauline Hanson has been noted. In Blair, held by Shayne Neumann on a margin of 4.3%, the candidate is Teresa Harding, who is “director of the F-111 Disposal and Aerial Targets Office” at the RAAF Base Amberley.
• Steven Scott of the Courier-Mail reports the candidate for Lilley in 2010, Rod McGarvie, a former soldier and United Nations peacekeeper, is the front-runner to again contest the seat from an LNP preselection field of “about six” in Lilley. Also mentioned has been John Cotter, GasFields commissioner and former head of agriculture lobby group AgForce.
• Rosanne Barrett of The Australian reports John Howard is among those who have thrown support behind former Wallabies coach in his bid for LNP preselection in Petrie, where 11 candidates have nominated to take on Labor member Yvette d’Ath, who holds the northern Brisbane seat on a margin of 2.5%. Connolly ran unsuccessfully against independent incumbent Peter Wellington in the Sunshine Coast seat of Nicklin at the state election.
• Andrew Crook at Crikey reported earlier this week that Senator David Feeney, who is unlikely to be re-elected from his third position on Labor’s Victorian Senate ticket, has been given the right to contest the first House of Representatives seat which becomes available in the election. He would presumably not have to wait long if Labor was defeated, and it suggested a vacancy would shortly become available in the Prime Minister’s electorate of Lalor. Such an agreement would presumably have been owed to the agreement by which Feeney’s own support base and that of the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association came back under the wing of the Labor Unity (Right) faction, associated in Victoria with Bill Shorten and Stephen Conroy. The earlier divide in the Right had seen various right forces estranged from the Shorten-Conroy axis and frozen out of a “stability pact” which divided spoils between Labor Unity and the Socialist Left.
• Andrew Crook at Crikey also reports Mark Hay, lawyer with the Office of the Director of Military Prosecutions, is gearing for a preselection challenge against Throsby MP Stephen Jones with the backing of his mother, Wollongong MP Noreen Hay. NSW Right sources quoted earlier in the week by Crook argued a decision to hold a rank-and-file preselection in the seat doomed Jones to defeat, as he had the support of about 50 members out of 300 and held the seat through a long-standing arrangement in which the Right had ceded Throsby to the Left in exchange for the western Sydney seat of Fowler. However, a Left source “suggested a deal could be reached to avoid a ballot in Throsby, with the Right extracting a chop out elsewhere”.
• The Liberals have taken the sting out of the looming NSW state by-election for Heffron by announcing they will not field a candidate. A by-election will be held for the seat on a date to be determined after Kristina Keneally quit politics to take up a position as chief executive of Basketball Australia. Ron Hoenig, a barrister of Jewish extraction who has been mayor of Botany Bay for no fewer than 31 consecutive years, has won Labor preselection unopposed, early favourite Michael Comninos having decided not to run. Hoenig was last on the preselection scene in 1990, when former state and future federal minister Laurie Brereton defeated him for preselection in Kingsford-Smith. The Liberals’ decision to abstain comes despite the margin having been cut from 23.7% to 7.1% at last year’s election, and the 3.0% swing recorded by the Queensland LNP in similar circumstances after Anna Bligh quit her seat of South Brisbane. Sean Nicholls of the Sydney Morning Herald reports some in the Liberal Party feared “a very strong possibility of a swing back, which would allow Labor to claim the byelection as a damning referendum on the first year of the O’Farrell government”.
[Only if was prepared to resign from the Shadow Ministry.]
So clearly what the Government should do is put a bill to parliament for civil unions if the same sex marriage bill fails (which seems likely).
That would smoke Turnbull out good and proper.
Liberals on 48 is very high
8 points 2pp is within reach though 🙂
Mod Lib – OK, we get the message. You’re largely right in this instance, but don’t be a prick.
womble – 12 points…
Show On going for Teachers’ Pet. Twat.
[gloryconsequence
Posted Monday, July 9, 2012 at 11:02 pm | Permalink
Mod Lib – OK, we get the message. You’re largely right in this instance, but don’t be a prick.]
Confessions doesn’t, the posts were largely for her!
But I take your point, not every poster is saying all will be well, many get it!
All these Bludgers going wobbly and prophesising doom and gloom….. Fickle, little people. We have a Labor a government in power introducing world leading and yes controversial reform (radical reform is never a cake walk) and a world leading economy. I’ll settle for that right now. It’s a year to the election and plenty of time to recover in the polls. Toughen up!!
[Yeah but you never follow me back on twitter…]
You’re over estimating how much I like you.
A reminder to Libs crowing over low ALP opinion polls,
No one said polls would suddenly shout up on July 1. I personally made the prediction that the primary vote for Labor would improve over time starting from July 1.
The PM has said it will perhaps take months of the lived in experience for the polls to change as far as the Carbon Price affects that.
So Libs no crowing time yet. I suggest leave it till November. If the polls are still low then crow away.
Now Mod Lib is a prick.
At least we have the full gender complment now.
Ok. William I’ll stop now.
[Show On going for Teachers’ Pet. Twat.]
I’m still waiting for your idiotic argument about why “originality” is the best criteria for evaluating the quality of art.
sorry typo. shout up should be shoot up.
[You’re over estimating how much I like you.]
Funny bastard.
What would be really, really funny is if this challenge to the mining tax ends up giving the federal parliament MORE control of taxes on mining.
If the High Court finds that the federal government actually owns mining resources it could mean that the federal government could just legislate to abolish state mining royalties and replace them all by increasing the mining resource rent tax.
[They have well and truly won the fight on the carbon tax.]
The heat went out of carbon price scare tactics some weeks ago.
Lib MPs have since moved onto boats. If they thought there was any further mileage to be milked from AGW they wouldn’t leave it to the hollowed out Greg Hunt to scare funeral directors about its impact.
@danielhurstbne: #Newspoll 2PP: ALP 44 (-1) L/NP 56 (+1); Pmy: ALP 31 (+1) L/NP 48 (+2) GRN 11 (-1); PrefPM: JG 36 (-3) TA 39 (+1) via @GhostWhoVotes #auspol
O well, nothing new to see. Very much a case of same old same old.
The real question between now and election day is can Tone whole it together, he still has a $70 Billion dollar problem but he may be able to explain it away.
Basically Tone will either win in a massive landslide or a solid majority.
[But I take your point, not every poster is saying all will be well, many get it!]
Mod,
You do repeat yourself a lot. It doesn’t make what you’re saying wrong, but it gets a bit boring.
guytar – a point well made, but the “just wait until…” meme has been running for 18 months now, and there has been no improvement in the polls, in fact they have gone backwards.
If there isn’t an improvement to a Primary of about 33/34 and Gillard’s satisfaction is as low as it is by October then we can look forward to a few years in opposition. I’m not suggesting Gillard should quit or Ruddstoration etc. but it’s basic political knowledge.
I defy anyone who suggests that Labor won’t lose 5 seats minimum at the next election.
that’s explains the 48 then – oops – it’s been a long day
GF day the new deadline imo
O come off it, there is no real originality in Art, yes there are original interpretations but that is part of the point of Art.
[So Libs no crowing time yet. I suggest leave it till November. If the polls are still low then crow away.]
OK, so now the line is November 2012, eh?
Well, I guess we just wait and watch the ongoing damage to the ALP, with even less time for repair of said damage.
You can leave it till November 2013 as far as the other side of politics cares!
Good night all, keep dreaming. 🙂
Shows On.
I never said it was.
You made that up.
I inferred you had to add ‘Dylan Thomas’ because you thought we wouldn’t know.
Although, while we’re on the topic I would recommend David Hare’s excellent piece in the Art Journal (Winter edition 1964-65) which I read a couple of years ago in preparation for a lecture I gave. Most interesting.
Cheers for now.
[Lib MPs have since moved onto boats]
That is clearly incorrect. Circumstances (eg. people drowning) moved the political debate onto boats.
glory
If the polls are still this low for Labor in November I think it will be time for Labor to seriously consider a new leader. However only then will the cure be better than the disease.
[Confessions doesn’t, the posts were largely for her!]
FFS can you at least own your own comments without trying to hide behind others?
It would at the very least be far more honest for you to do so.
[You can leave it till November 2013 as far as the other side of politics cares!]
Im leaving it to 25 Dec 2012 roasted turkey day.
Guytaur – I seriously dealt a change of leader will improve the ALP’s position, yes Kevin may be more popular in Queensland but the policies that underpinned this Government’s unpopularity will still be in place.
I’m hoping Dylan Thomas is a good sire 🙂
😆 rummel
guytaur
I thought you are a green? Bob Brown was static for years and the greens did not boot him out on is ass.
[That is clearly incorrect. Circumstances (eg. people drowning) moved the political debate onto boats.]
And tHE Liberals have kept the debate there rather than go back to what others are claiming is a vote winning panacea for them: carbon pricing
mexicanbeemer – Rudd will not get the gig.
And Shows On the mare.
[51
ShowsOn
Only if was prepared to resign from the Shadow Ministry.
So clearly what the Government should do is put a bill to parliament for civil unions if the same sex marriage bill fails (which seems likely).
That would smoke Turnbull out good and proper.]
He has probably come to the view that the Government won’t do this, enabling him to advocate a reform for which he will not have to vote. The Government have had enough trouble with the amendment to the Marriage Act. They won’t want to revisit the same territory again.
confessions – they can pick and choose. Do you want boats on the agenda, or carbon pricing? Both are deadly for the Government.
I suggest that it’s actually Labor that have deflected from carbon pricing, not the Opps.
Rossmore
[All these Bludgers going wobbly and prophesising doom and gloom….. Fickle, little people.]
Some are poll driven! 😉
mexi
I doubt it too. I think the polls will improve by November myself. So I think that will mean no change of leader. If I am wrong at that stage then Labor will lose nothing by changing leaders. I agree that would mean policy changes too.
Dee – some are rational.
Glory – I agree but I am not sure if anyone else will be willing to lead the ALP to a clear defeat.
Of course things can turn around but I just cannot see this Government doing it and I cannot think of any way for it to do so.
Good night my right of centre friends (thats you Team Labor) 🙂
[75
guytaur
glory
If the polls are still this low for Labor in November I think it will be time for Labor to seriously consider a new leader. However only then will the cure be better than the disease.]
This won’t happen. Labor will live with the consequences of their decisions, for better or for worse. They are not cowards and they will take the fight to their opponents on both sides.
[The real question between now and election day is can Tone whole it together, he still has a $70 Billion dollar problem but he may be able to explain it away.]
He’s also got to find another $7bill per year as well according to George Megalogenis.
mex – either Gillard goes down with the ship, or Crean takes over in November/February.
[Both are deadly for the Government.]
The heat went out of carbon pricing some weeks ago. Seriously, it’s gone.
Hence we are onto boats now, rather fortuitously for the opps due to recent arrivals and deaths at sea.
rummel
I am a Green Voter. However the Labor party is a different beast. How Caucus will react to polls in government is different to how the Greens react to polls out of government.
I hope the polls do improve but if they don’t a new leader needs time to get in and established – it doesn’t have to be messy, just needs Julia to put the party first and for Rudd to stay well away from the job.
[He’s also got to find another $7bill per yea]
Not $7b. $70b.
[Shows On.
I never said it was.
You made that up.]
So just bloody write down what you mean instead of being a “twat”.
[I inferred you had to add ‘Dylan Thomas’ because you thought we wouldn’t know.]
What the hell are you going on about now? I didn’t have to add anything. Saying that art must be “original” for it to be good is just idiotic. That’s what the lady on Q&A said and that is what I criticised.
[Although, while we’re on the topic I would recommend David Hare’s excellent piece in the Art Journal (Winter edition 1964-65) which I read a couple of years ago in preparation for a lecture I gave. Most interesting.]
OH NO WAY! YOU PREPARED A LECTURE! SAY IT AIN’T SO!
Still waiting for your argument…
Well said Rossmore. 12 months is an awful long time in politics. Funny, according to some the ALP is supposed to just give up now, panic and beg the electorate for forgiveness or something?? And this will somehow, magically translate into an election win, or less of a loss?
I can understand this from the Fiberal supporters who come here though the hubris is getting a bit thick. But from putative ALP backers, again and again and again…….and so vitriolic?? Sad.