GhostWhoVotes tweets that a Galaxy poll on federal voting intention in Queensland gives the Coalition a two-party lead of 57-43 – a seven-point turn-around in Labor’s favour since the last such poll three months ago, suggesting a swing to the Coalition/LNP of only 2% since the 2010 election. Leaving aside the Labor-skewed Morgan face-to-face series, the last time a published poll of federal voting intention showed a swing that low was the Newspoll of May 27-29, 2011, which had the Coalition leading 52-48 nationally. The only Queensland seat Labor would lose on a uniform swing of that size would be Moreton, held by Graham Perrett on a margin of 1.1% (the present numbers in Queensland are 21 seats for the LNP, eight for Labor and one for Bob Katter). The primary votes are 30% for Labor (up seven on the previous poll) and 49% for the Coalition (down seven). The poll also finds 52% detecting little or no impact of the carbon tax on their household budget, against 15% for “major impact” and 27% for “minor impact”. New asylum seeker laws are rated “strong” by 26% of respondents, “inhumane” by 18% and “too little too late” by 51%. The poll was conducted on Wednesday and Thursday from a sample of 800, and has a margin of error of about 3.5%.
UPDATE: The Sunday Mail today has further results from the poll which show “two out of three people believe the Premier is going too far with his proposal to cut 20,000 public sector jobs”, together with figures showing widespared feelings of job insecurity, particularly among government employees.
Further evidence of the Queensland elastic snapping back was provided earlier this week by ReachTEL, which conducted automated phone polls of three seats out of the many which the LNP won from Labor at the state election. These showed Labor leading in two of the seats and lineball in the third. My own calculation of two-party preferred results based on preferences from the previous election had Labor leading 60-40 in Sandgate, a swing to the of 13%, and 51-49 in Brisbane Central, a swing to them of 6%. I had the LNP 51-49 ahead in Towsville, but Possum has it at 51-49 in Labor’s favour – no doubt having used a formula that took better account of the decline of the Katter’s Australian Party vote. The poll also found Campbell Newman’s personal ratings in Sandgate and Townsville in Tony Abbott if not Julia Gillard territory, though he scored better in Brisbane Central. There was similarly a strong view he had not kept his promises in Sandgate and Townville, but an even divide of opinion in Brisbane Central. The samples on each poll were around 400, for margins of error approaching 5%.
And not forgetting …
Seat of the week: Lingiari
I’ve previously been limited my Seat of the Week choices to seats where both parties have preselected candidates, but am making an exception today in a spirit of keeping things topical. The federal seat of Lingiari covers the entirety of the Northern Territory outside of Darwin, which for the most part will play second fiddle during tomorrow night’s election count: whereas Darwin’s suburbs teem with marginal seats, the remainder is largely divided between Country Liberal Party strongholds in Alice Springs and Labor strongholds elsewhere. However, the tea-leaves of the regional and remote results will be read carefully for federal implications given Labor member Warren Snowdon’s narrow margin in Lingiari, and recent rumours of Labor internal polling showing him headed for defeat.
The Northern Territory was first granted its own seat in the federal parliament in 1922, but its member did not attain full voting rights until 1968. Perhaps not coincidentally, the seat had recently fallen to Sam Calder of the Country Party after a long period of Labor control. The Country Liberal Party was established in 1978 as a local alliance between coalition parties to contest elections in the the newly established Northern Territory parliament, and Grant Tambling succeeded Calder as its members upon the latter’s retirement at the 1980 election. Tambling was unseated by Labor’s John Reeves in 1983, and returned as a Senator four years later. The seat thereafter changed hands with some regularity: future Chief Minister Paul Everingham recovered it for the CLP in 1984, Warren Snowdon won it back for Labor in 1987, Nick Dondas held it for the CLP for one term from 1996, and Snowdon recovered it in 1998.
The population of the Northern Territory is such that it consistently hovers between an entitlement of one or two seats according to the formula used to allocate seats to the states and territories. It first rose above the line prior to the 2001 election, resulting in the territory’s division between Solomon, covering Darwin, and Lingiari, which in accommodating the entire remainder of the territory is the second largest electorate in geographical terms after Durack in Western Australia. However, when the Australian Electoral Commission next conducted its mid-term determination of seat entitlements the Northern Territory had fallen 295 residents short of the number required to its second seat. With Labor and the Coalition both convinced they could win both seats at the 2004 election, the parliament proved amenable to arguments that the determination left the territory under-represented, and passed legislation to reinstate the second seat. Solomon and Lingiari accordingly have the lowest enrolments of any seats in Australia at around 62,000, compared with a national average of about 95,000 (which together with the extensive use of mobile booths explains the scarcity of numbers on the 2010 results map at the bottom of the post).
Lingiari is notable for having by far the highest proportion of indigenous persons of any seat in the country, at 41.8% against 15.7% for second-placed Durack. Relatedly, and depressingly, it also has the lowest median age of any electorate. The support of Aboriginal voters has given Labor enough of a base to have kept the seat in their hands, despite CLP strength in pastoral areas and the urban centres of Alice Springs, Katherine and Tennant Creek. Labor’s margins have progressed over four elections from 5.3% to 7.7% to 11.2% to 3.7%. The diversity of the electorate’s components can make for enormously complicated election results, as demonstrated by local swings over the last three elections. In the wake of the Howard government’s intervention into Aboriginal communities before the 2007 election, mobile polling booths swung 8.4% to Warren Snowdon off an already very high base of 78.7%. However, it was a very different story in 2010, when these booths swung to the CLP by no less than 28.1% – a result variously put down to the troubled Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program, the actions of newly merged regional councils, and the ongoing suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act by the new Labor government. Remarkably, the swings in Alice Springs were in the opposite direction, with Snowdon down 2.6% in 2007 and up 8.4% in 2010. In Tennant Creek the Labor vote fell from 58.7% to 34.2% while the Greens rocketed from 4.6% to 33.7%, a result credited to the Muckaty Station nuclear waste dump proposal.
Snowdon is a figure in Labor’s Left faction, and has held junior ministry positions since the Rudd government came to power in 2007. He had earlier been a parliamentary secretary during his first stint as a member from 1990 to 1996, again reaching the position in opposition after the 2001 election. After the 2007 election win he received a substantial promotion to the junior defence science and personnel ministry, which Glenn Milne in The Australian credited to his close association with Julia Gillard. Snowdon was demoted to indigenous health, rural and regional services after Joel Fitzgibbon resigned as Defence Minister in June 2009, which Philip Dorling of the Canberra Times put down to incoming Defence Minister John Faulkner’s “longstanding lack of enthusiasm” for him, “and perhaps more specific concerns about the contribution Mr Snowdon’s office may have made in the past week to Fitzgibbon’s downfall”. He recovered defence science after the 2010 election and further gained veterans affairs, while dropping rural and regional services.
Have heard the logo referred to a a SAO dipped in vegemite by friends.
Don
[The 802205 on the left of the cheque is similarly misaligned.
Dunno if that means anything.]
That the person who forged the document isn’t very good at forgery?
oh, its an AWU cheque, I thought ir was an Association cheque.
With PB on the job, what chance do the forgers have?
ajm:
Yes, I am looking for the rubber stamp. Wrongly as it turns out. I’m only used to presenting cheques made out to me, not as a bulk thing.
Puff
[oh, its an AWU cheque, I thought ir was an Association cheque.]
No the printed name says “AWU Workplace Safety Ass”, so it’s not the union, it’s the “slush fund”.
[we are talking Association money here, NOT AWU money. ]
The name that the house was purchased in using money that was paid into the S&G T/A by the association is an issue.
So, let me get this straight.
* This cheque was for the deposit for a house bought by the man Julia Gillard DID NOT have a relationship with?
* And the PM is complicit in the wrongdoings of this man/these men how? By being in a relationship with one of them? By having <6 degrees of separation from the guy who bought the house with money from the fund? A fund which no one has been able to prove was fraudulent in any way enough to generate criminal charges as a result?
All I can say is that this is simply more 'Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more' stuff. And has all the gravity of a Monty Python skit.
lizzie,
[ Hang on. This cheque has been drawn on the Slater and Gordon Trust account, which means that the money came in earlier and was available for settlement. That’s enough for the conveyancing solicitor. ]
You’ve got it back to front! The Trust Fund is the “Payee”, The Workplace Reform Association is the “Payor”!
Therefor, this cheque was supposed to cover a payment by Slater & Gordon as settlement for the house.
The Payor is on the wrong side of the cheque also. One would think that if some one representing an organisation that seems to have problems with counterfeiting documents, that they would at least have run it past an ex banker to ensure it passes the credibility test.
It fails on numerous accounts including the fact that it is only a poor facsimile that has “never” been presented to a Bank and processed.
At first processing it would have had a “Batch Stamp” emblazoned across it and when checked by the Bank Examiner, had a line drawn across it to authenticate that it was not stale and the signatures were legitimate.
If presented at another Bank prior to exchange with the originator bank, then it would have had that Bank’s Batch Stamp embossed across it.
It would be very unlikely to then be released to the originator or a third party except for exceptional circumstances after processing (ie Police) and would always remain the property of the bank until reaching the date at which it could be destroyed.
Just looking at my own cheque book –
The numbers on the left are the cheque number
The next set of numbers from the left is the Bank/Branch Number
The third set of numbers is the account number
Interesting the numbers on the right appears to be the amount of the cheque .
Also it looks like a photocopy of a photocopy. Signatures blocked out in the photocopying.
This little black duck
Who woulda thought PB would have several Commonwealth Bank logo
“Trainspotters” !!!
Ducky,
It is a sad indictment of the media that we no longer trust what we are being told!
Had a totally weird “The DNS server is not responding” on OH’s laptop. Started when she logged on this morning.
Our machines are configured identically. She was on our home network with “no internet connection”; I had no problem.
Fixed it by running a system restore from 3 days ago. Weird!
Hey, waaaiiit a minute…
The Commonwealth “diamond” logo on the cheque at Bolt’s blog has the black bit at the top right.
It’s 180 degrees arse about. The REAL logo has the black bit at the bottom left.
as in here:
http://www.commbank.com.au/
The rubber stamp would only be on the original and kept by the bank.
Shit… Top LEFT at Bolt’s, bottom RIGHT in reality.
Dyslexia.
Bushfire Bill – They look the same to me, we can’t see the pale rest of the logo
I don’t think “Bolt’s bottom” is an issue here.
[The Commonwealth “diamond” logo on the cheque at Bolt’s blog has the black bit at the top right.]
No it doesn’t. The black bit is where it should’ve been at the time
http://web.archive.org/web/19961101041444/http://www.commbank.com.au/
When are we going to start our own PB sleuthing biz or do we just do pro bono for good causes?
Scorpio
You’re right. I said that backwards. It’s just the amount paid in by the Assoc. Julia needn’t even have seen it, as it would have been put through the books by the normal processes.
[Interesting the numbers on the right appears to be the amount of the cheque .]
The scanned output of processing – this cheque has been presented, I think.
Still numerous questions about it.
Could someone go back to the first post of this subject and work out how long it took us to crack the case?
[Bushfire Bill
Posted Saturday, August 25, 2012 at 6:40 pm | Permalink
Hey, waaaiiit a minute…
The Commonwealth “diamond” logo on the cheque at Bolt’s blog has the black bit at the top right.
It’s 180 degrees arse about. The REAL logo has the black bit at the bottom left.
as in here:
http://www.commbank.com.au/
]
So Bolts a internet nutjob and moronic.
There was DNS virus thing a while back and a Commonwealth Government site to use to check if your machine had been effected.
Google it and run your machine through it. Its basically a one click thing.
As a side note, Banks traditionally kept cheques and Deposit slips for 14 years from the date of receipt. (ie twice the 7 years required by the Tax Office for Organisations & Individuals to keep records)
I am an ex Banker!
I think Bolt is trying to imply that Julia might have signed the cheque on behalf of the Assoc., but “I’m making no accusations”, says he.
Thanks, Dave.
One to remember for next time, if any.
Hang on, what proof is there that this “cheque” was used to pay for any house?
What if Julia Gillard was a Communist? And what if she went to Russia for training? And what if she entrapped a sweet, innocent, naive little trade union boss into setting up a slush fund? And what if she bought a house for one of his mates, to further the Russian plan for world domination?
And what if Andrew Bolt is the only brave Australian standing between her and our freedoms?
I make no accusations, mind.
Puff – is the case cracked? No one seems to have definitive yes or no on it yet, or what version it might purport to be (e.g. presented).
It does look to me like a scanned copy, which banks often hold, or a photo copy of a photo copy.
Even if it’s a real copy, actually means very little. It would aleady have been weighed up by anyone investigating the business.
@lenoretaylor: An inconvenient absence of devastation http://t.co/LlwTxk4Z via @smh
Lizzie,
How could Julia sign on behalf of the Association unless she had a signature registered at the bank as a signatory on the cheque account?
Leroy,
No, i got excited when BB thought he found an upside down logo.
Does anyone know if Jess Wright was picked up on her use of “trust fund” in the Age yesterday?
There is one point that is kind of intriguing. The background of the cheque is very white. There are usually a repeating little images as a background pattern. I would have thought these would have shown in some form. Could be wrong.
I think Bolt is trying to imply she would have seen the chq, and asked about the source of the funds.
Puff
Yes, and Bolt is therefore implying that she was virtually managing the fund she set up. It’s all horsefeathers.
lizzie – yes, that was fixed within the hour (which I saw online), later subjected to multiple tweets of PB posters attacking her for the error after it was already fixed.
As I said earlier, this is a Bolt special: damned by association. He is hoping to rope the PM into something potentially scandalous based on the flimsiest of evidence.
It isn’t worth it.
Scorpio
[Banks traditionally kept cheques and Deposit slips for 14 years]
After they ‘out-scourced’ the cheque presentation process did this happen (around that time I think) ?
(Sometime in the past I knew some of APCA rules and processes ..)
Finns tweeted her last night and it was corrected.
Subbies had altered her report. She accepted responsibility but was furious with the subbies.
Corrected pretty quickly really.
Breaking: ALP VOTES up +39%
Leroy
Glad about that. We don’t want anyone to think Age readers aren’t on the ball 🙂
Scorpio
I’m an ex bank robber and you don’t steal cashed cheques . Smiley.
The Commonwealth Bank in Perth is at 86 Barrack Street. There is no longer a bank at 86 James Street. Coincidence about the 86 being the same?
Bolt has been sold a crock of shit.
lizzie,
[ Scorpio
You’re right. I said that backwards. It’s just the amount paid in by the Assoc. Julia needn’t even have seen it, as it would have been put through the books by the normal processes. ]
Worse than that for Bolt, Lizzie, is that the Payee is a “Trust Account” that didn’t exist at all and even if it did, the Admin Clerk at the Practice would have been the one to receive the cheque and bank it as per normal procedure.
The cheque for the settlement would have been signed and countersigned by the signatories authorised by the Deed of Trust.
It seems to be universally acknowledged (even by the bloodthirsty Media) that there never was any such “”Trust” Fund. Certainly a “Slush Fund” and as an ex Union Official, I can tell you that they were universal and “NEVER” classified as property of the respective Union.
They were exactly as has been mentioned many times even by JG herself, that they were for the purposes of re-election of Union Officers with a common interest.
If you fell out with the Administration or the Team in general, then you got excluded from the benefits of the fund and were probably refunded your individual contribution and forced to finance your own re-election campaign.
OK, OK, basically the imputation is that because the PM was the conveyancer in this house purchase, she is guilty as Judge Dredd Bolt charges because the moneys used to purchase the house came from a ‘Slush Fund’ and she knew it was a ‘Slush Fund’, and OKed the deal?
The Wobblebys are having a shocker followed by the Ref and them Sheeppen Shaggers play dirty
dave
Wow! No wonder she was furious. Subbies could have caused her grief.