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Roy Morgan has published a poll which, so far as the headline figure goes, is extremely interesting in that it a) is consistent with the Newspoll result, and b) was conducted by phone, and thus cannot be anticipated to suffer the pro-Labor bias typical of Morgan’s face-to-face polling. However, the headline figure to which I refer is from respondent-allocated preferences, which for so long have been flowing to Labor in confoundingly weak proportions in Morgan’s face-to-face polls. In this poll however they have flowed to Labor inordinately strongly. If using the measure which allocates preferences according to how they flowed at the previous election, which I and all other pollsters recommended, the Coalition has a somewhat more comfortable lead of 52.5-47.5. The primary vote results are striking in being high for both major parties: 39.5% for Labor and 47% for the Coalition, against 8% for the Greens and a very low 5.5% for others.
The poll was evidently conducted from Monday to Thursday (despite some confusion in Morgan’s heading) from a sample of 668, with a margin of error of about 3.8%. Other questions were also posed by this poll, so stay tuned for more detail.
NOTE: As you may have noticed, Crikey has a new look and its implementation is characteristically being accompanied by teething problems – most seriously the failure of comments thread pagination, which has caused the previous 5000-plus comments thread to not work terribly well. Presumably this one should be okay though, for at least as long as it remains fairly short.
UPDATE: Further findings from the Morgan poll are that Julia Gillard recorded a fairly solid approval rating of 40%, with disapproval of 51%, which represents changes of 3% and 6% since Morgan last posed the question in January. Tony Abbott meanwhile is respectively down four to 32% and up four to 60%. On the question of better prime minister, Gillard has remained steady on 45% while Abbott has dropped four points to 37%. Abbott has also lost further ground to Malcolm Turnbull on the question of best leader for the Liberal Party, the former down three to 19% and the latter up five to 42%. That leaves Abbott nearly level with Joe Hockey, who is down one to 18%. Julia Gillard continues to trail Kevin Rudd as preferred Labor leader, with Gillard up three to 22% and Rudd up one to 34%.
And not forgetting …
Seat of the week: Bonner
To commemorate Labor’s improved position in the polls, Seat of the Week takes its first excursion to the Coalition side of the electoral pendulum.
The Brisbane electorate of Bonner extends south-westwards from the bayside Wynnum-Manly area to Mount Gravatt. It was created at the 2004 election, and has remarkably been left unchanged by the two redistributions conducted since. The seat is also remarkable for having changed hands with each election, starting with the Liberals’ success in overhauling a 1.9% notional margin in 2004. The defeated Labor candidate was Con Sciacca, a Keating government minister who held Bowman from 1987 to 1996 and again from 1998 to 2004. Sciacca took the safer option when the transfer of Wynnum-Manly to the new seat left Bowman with a notional Liberal margin of 3.1%, but he was unable to withstand an adverse swing of 2.4%. Labor appeared to be especially hampered by the loss of Kevin Rudd’s personal vote in those areas of the electorate which had previously been in Griffith.
The inaugural member for Bonner thus became Ross Vasta, a staffer to Senator Brett Mason, former restaurant owner, and the son of noted Brisbane barrister and Bjelke-Petersen era Supreme Court justice Angelo Vasta. Vasta’s main source of publicity in his one term in parliament was his involvement in the scandal surrounding misuse of electoral printing allowances, for which he was cleared by the Director of Public Prosecutions shortly before the 2007 election. He was always going to have his work cut out defending the Coalition’s most marginal Queensland seat at the 2007 election, and duly fell victim to a 5.2% swing which compared favourably with a statewide swing of 7.5%.
Bonner was then held for a term by Kerry Rea, previously a Brisbane councillor representing a ward that included the area around Mount Gravatt. Vasta meanwhile returned to his old job with Brett Mason and unsuccessfully contested the Wynnum-Manly ward for the Liberals at the 2008 Brisbane council election. The newly constituted Liberal National Party then gave him the chance to recover his old seat, which did not seem a likely proposition in the political climate of the time. While that had certainly changed by the time of the 2010 election, Vasta’s victory on the back of an emphatic 7.4% swing was a serious disappointment for Labor, making Bonner the “safest” of its nine notionally held Queensland seats to fall to the LNP.
Labor’s preselected candidate for the next election is Laura Fraser Hardy, an associate with Hall Payne Lawyers.
Lots of children were sent to Australia from the UK during WW2
[Lots of children were sent to Australia from the UK during WW2]
No lots were not, this is the whole point.
According to Alan Gill’s book Orphans of the Empire, Australia welcomed 600 unaccompanied British children who came as evacuees. Evacuations began in July 1940 and stopped in September same year. Their ages ranged from 5 to 15. As Mr Abbott Snr was accompanied by his father, he did no fit that category or age range.
I think Chris Murphy’s tweet is distasteful and not relevant to any current discussion. It also gives a free kick to the Opposition.
LBB:
[It is making reading harder . Did you get a IT person from Ltd News to do this ?]
William has nothing to do with this. This is a crikey decision, not a William Bowe decision. Swinging at him is unfair. You should apologise.
William is no doubt taking on board and passing on feedback from those of us concerned. Whatever happens about that, we ought not to harass William merely because he is the face at the window.
My last comment on the subject.
It appears that Mr Abbott’s grandfather left the UK in 1940 with his family, this would have been seen as a cowardly act if he was able bodied, he would have been shunned by his peers.
Maybe this is why we know so little.
Rua certainly thousands so it depends on how one defines lots.
You are all correct! Child migration stopped at the outset of the war in 1939 and the evacuations started when invasion of Britain was thought imminent. They lasted only a few months as Leroy pointed out. Child migration resumed in 1945.
Abbott Snr was in the July Sept evacuations.
[…we ought not to harass William merely because he is the face at the window.]
His silhouette top right has to be a fake – too much hair. 🙂
Fran Barlow
Posted Sunday, September 23, 2012 at 6:47 pm | Permalink
…
Below, BB made a comment about the new format at this site putting it in “the perpetual present”. It was a clever ontological claim
I think claiming BB’s comment has anything to do with the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence, or reality, is going a bit far, but anyway.
…
It’s also clear that when someone says they favour “the traditional view” of marriage, they are either speaking without knowledge or suggesting practices we of the modern world would find abhorrent. We might well ask — which “traditional view” they prefer.
The whole idea was children to inherit the property, until recently that was a big problem for same sex couples, skip St Pauls problems with his sexuality (that guy had real issues), and as for Timothy a real women hater that one.
Now the problems are much smaller, which family pays the dowry, and which partner gets the property rights.
[too much hair]
For some one who has to moderate this unruly pack?
Fantastic 50 photos of 50 states – for the USAphiles
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/09/america-50-states-in-50-photos/100372/
A good new feature: you don’t have to go to a new screen to log in.
So long as William’s NOTE appears at the top we can expect further improvements.
For those interested, AM Agenda is repeated tonight at 8pm on Sky News.
Sorry William , Aunty Fran told to apologise to you about my comments. Could you please pass on my comments to CRikey.com.
While Abbott’s father and family run away to Australia , my mother was learning to shoot a .303 and pack parachutes at a aerodrome for the fighter bombers.She joined the WRENS at 17 yrs old and opened up a whole new world to her. First time she saw a Black person , was at a dance hall. She said the Americans were always very polite and had stuff like Chocolate , eggs and stockings. Got lifts in army trucks,on the back of army Harley Davidson’s and went for a flight in a Tiger-Moth .Some sad stories about watching planes coming home , all shot up and just the pilot alive.Sent half her wage home to her mother.With all the men off at war , women did everything to keep the war effort going.
Wow, in the UK, polling has the Liberal Democrats vote lower than UKIP, making it 4th.
Nick Clegg’s net approval is -48. It’s no wonder he gets ridiculed like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUDjRZ30SNo
[Nick Clegg’s net approval is -48.]
Aaah. If only we had netsats for the Green leaders here. 🙂
frednk:
[Below, BB made a comment about the new format at this site putting it in “the perpetual present”. It was a clever ontological claim
]
Well not with the study of being but it was an assertion about the nature of the being, existence or reality of this site — in this case that it was temporally bounded by the prssent.
I plead guilty to being slightly tongue-in-cheek so that I could segue to the nature of the being, existence or reality of the institution: “marriage” and its paradoxical boundedness in the present despite the implication that its existence is the provenance of ancient custom. Arguably, if this is so, then the faux traditionalists to the contrary, innovating with it crosses no ontological rubicon.
Ok, I was having a bit of fun with philosophy and history, but the point was a serious one.
Kevin Bonham
[Aaah. If only we had netsats for the Green leaders here.]
1. Clegg is not a “Green” leader. He’s their Meg Lees.
2. We’d do pretty well IMO.
It’s not only Nick who is in trouble.
‘Dave’ & ‘George’s’ excellent adventure is not generating warm feelings from the public:
[Divided Britain’s ‘bleak future’
Study suggests rich will get richer and poor poorer as chancellor plans further £10bn of welfare cuts]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/sep/22/living-standards-report-divided-britain
The photo of Abbott kissing the baby doesn’t do him any favours:
The pursed lips make him look like a chimp, and combined with his simian gait these unflattering images will be more grist for the cartoonist’s mill.
[1. Clegg is not a “Green” leader. He’s their Meg Lees.]
I’m aware of that. Just pointing out that when it comes to voter satisfaction things aren’t easy being the leader of a third party, particularly not in any form of coalition. A third party leader doesn’t have a big base of automatic approvers so if supporters of the other parties do not like what they’re doing then they’re going to get an especially scummy netsat.
[2. We’d do pretty well IMO.]
I’d be interested to see.
That said there *are* actually a very small number of Tasmanian Green leader netsats c/- Newspoll (recently these have occurred mainly in the leadup to elections: )
August 1989 Brown +6
Oct 1990 Brown -28
Nov 1991 Brown -27
Jan 1992 Brown -19
Dec 1994 Milne -4
Feb 1996 Milne -7
Aug 1998 Milne -4
Mar 2006 Putt +2
Mar 2010 McKim +26
I don’t think McKim would have anything like that big a plus now, and possibly not even a plus at all.
Another article on increasing US voting restrictions.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/09/voting-right-or-privilege/262511/
[Voting: Right or Privilege?
By Garrett Epps
Sep 18 2012, 11:49 AM ET
The Constitution mentions “the right to vote” five times. Judges, and voter ID law proponents, don’t seem to be getting the hint.]
I’m glad we’ve been going the other way, as discussed in… http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2012/09/13/automatic-for-the-people/
Jill Meagher is a ABC radio employee in Melbourne has gone missing.
[AN Irish woman who works for ABC radio in Melbourne has vanished while walking home from a Brunswick bar]
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/irish-woman-mysteriously-vanishes-while-walking-home-from-a-brunswick-bar/story-e6frf7kx-1226479708333
Out of Afghanistan now
_______________
It seems that even the Right in the USA is now calling for an accelarated pull-out
McCain and several other Repugs once very pro-war now see the war as lost and McCain now calls for a complete withdrawal now
The latest turn of events with Afghan soldiers killing US/allied troops has destroyed the last flimsy pretence of “training” the Afghan army
So in the US (see the article)even the Right wants out !
Some say Obama may speed up the withdrawal after the elections in Nov
When will this penetrate to Gillard/Smit/Abbott and the others
http://www.moonofalabama.org/
Not for want of the Howard government trying…
It is silly too try to make anything of abbott’s grandfather’s fleeing the uk – other than noting the boat person /’refugee’ comparison. Also converting to Catholicism seems to have been fashionable in the 1940s – no idea why – was it a reaction to liberalisation of Anglicans? What matters is Abbott and his politics now. They are a big enough target without worrying what his granddad did. His Catholicism and reaction to Vatican II is more telling- he’s a Latin mass type – the types who backed Franco, marcos, and several south and Central American dictators because they were catholic anti-communists. He is the type of catholic who’d like to see theocracy and the church creep into the law/government, who do not like democracy, and reject the enlightenment. In short they are fascists in the mould of Franco. They are medievalists. Abbott repeatedly uses the language of this type of thinking – people are not ‘pure of heart’; etc. he stopped training to be a priest because the church was at the time not conservative enough for him. He is a scary fanatic and the limbs are a disgrace for unleashing this dlp loon- his record as a dlp loon is long and they should never have let him be loto.
[They are medievalists. Abbott repeatedly uses the language of this type of thinking]
Yet another example just this week:
[QUESTION: This is the second time that Senator Bernardi’s either been sacked or forced to resign from a frontbench role, a parliamentary secretary’s role. How many times do you need to be sacked to be dis-endorsed?
TONY ABBOTT:Well, these are matters for the lay party. Cory is a talented politician, with much to contribute but, plainly, he has been guilty of ill-discipline, lack of judgment and he will have to do a fair bit of political penance, no doubt about that.]
WTF is a lay party? The non-Opus Dei part of the Liberals?
http://tonyabbott.com.au/LatestNews/InterviewTranscripts/tabid/85/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/8892/Press-Conference-Parliament-House.aspx
Lacoon
He’s transferred the usage of the term lay church or laity, meaning all those members of the church who are not clergy, to a political party. He did without thinking through how it might look to others to use that term it seems. No one as far as I know ever uses the term in politics. I presume he meant by way of analogy the non-parliamentary party, i.e. its up to people outside parliament to decide such things as Cory’s preselection, in reply to a question on dis-endorsement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laity
Leroy
Indeed. And this is a key point
[He did without thinking…]
His reflex response is back to his (version of) Catholicism (nice term by sustainable future, mediaevalists); reflected in the very language he uses.
I suspect if one had the time and even more importantly, the inclination, one could find examples from Abbott’s public utterances every day of the week
I’ve just had a quiet moment or two to finally get around to reading Barrie Cassidy’s piece about the PM’s resolve in the face of the attacks on her earlier in the year, before the Price on Carbon came into effect, and, as is my wont, and as there are 548 comments to the article, I like to scroll down through them and just stop at random points and read what people have to say.
In doing so tonight I think it fair to say that the majority of the commenters ‘get’ what it is that the government are trying to do for the country, and, there was a lot less of the sneering and abusive kind of posts which had been commonplace until recently.
I’d just like to share one of the posts with you all because I think it sums up the attitude abroad in the community now towards the PM and how it has changed. Which you could also say may be behind the ALP’s revival in the polls. Enjoy!
The Seeker:
21 Sep 2012 2:00:16pm
Barry, you should assume the courage to go further when you feature Julia Gillard. You should be inviting the population to rejoice with you in the fact that Julia has had what it takes to stare down the army of frenetic distractors all around her and continues to favour us with her style of Prime-Ministership – her moral courage, her compassion, her accurate insights into what measures will result in the long-term benefit of all our people, not just the chosen few. This is not even to mention her much above average grey matter and her proven people skills born of her working-class background and her commitment to education for everybody.
Much too much is made of Tony’s Rhodes scholarship. Many are the eligible young people who investigated the possibility of applying for one only to conclude that, after all the calculations of financial pros and cons involved, a successful application would be beyond their cash back-up, and that Rhodes scholarships are for relative silver-tails. In any case, it seems that Tony’s major accomplishment at Oxford was a boxing blue. What a big deal!
Tony could well be a good bloke – as a neighbour, a companion over a couple of beers, as a husband and father and all the rest. As the arbiter of our over-all welfare, however, and as the leader of our country, give me Julia Gillard every time.
ISRAELI’S NOW FEAR NETANYAHU IS ALIENATING US OPINION WITH HIS ATTACKS ON OBAMA AND INTERFERING IN US POLITICS
______________
http://news.yahoo.com/israelis-fear-pm-meddling-us-politics-161611300.html?_esi=1
KevinB:
[1. Clegg is not a “Green” leader. He’s their Meg Lees.
]
True, but it is more common in the UK. The problem with Clegg is that he didn’t stick to his promises and he made promises he ought to have known he couldn’t keep in coaltion with the Tories.
[A third party leader doesn’t have a big base of automatic approvers]
I don’t think that’s true of the LDP or us, but in the case of the LDP they are between the majors not to the left of the Labour Party or the right of the Tories.
We have a committed base. We aren’t pitching at winning over Liberals so we don’t have the same pressure. About 1 in 12 will always vote for us as long as we stick to principles they endorse. In Australia we have preferential voting so those wanting to vote tactically can give the ALP a preference. With FPTP in the UK people have to vote against Labour or the Tories to vote LDP.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-one-murdered-because-of-this-image,29553/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=fb-image:quote:default
A more nuanced take on the recent riots…
C@tmomma – do you have alink to the Barry Cassidy piece?
Annabel Crabb in the Age today.
[The memories of my brief time in student politics fill me with awkwardness and shame, because, I was an under-informed, over-opinionated little prat]
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/hits-and-memories-come-to-the-aid-of-the-party-but-its-over–really-20120922-26drs.html#ixzz27IGdroT9
she applies the past tense,but I think she described her current persona beautifully. She also goes on to say she ran as a lefty, but though the conservative candidate was ‘a good chap’ – adding the whole ra-ra hockey stick private school vibe she has – little prat indeed . She epitomises everything wrong with the ABC. how long before she gets liberal pre-selection?
Fiona
[we PB women not merely wreck the joint, each of us is more than capable of taking on the entire PB male contingent with one arm tied behind us and subduing them with one fell glance.]
And we wouldn’t have it any other way. 😉
C@t @ 1330
Nice comment from that reader and spot on in my view. I suspect the PM is growing on us day by day and it’s quite possible (given a favourable result in 2013) that she will turn out to be one of the longest serving and most loved.
Lacoon
[WTF is a lay party?]
lay = to knock or beat down, as from an erect position; strike or throw to the ground: ‘One punch laid him low’.
Says it all really.
The changes to PB …. It’s a been a bit like the annual family Xmas reunion – all the same familiar faces, but a few surprising developments, the occasional embarrassing and frustrating moment, and the sense that normal services will surely be resumed quite quickly. Like all of us, William as ever has seen it all before.
Rossmore
Or – like turning up to the favourite restaurant post make-over and finding the ambience lost.
Liverpool v Man U … One of the great sporting fixtures …..
Rossmore,
Here’s the link to the Barrie Cassidy piece you requested:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-21/cassidy-carbon-tax-a-fresh-debate-is-underway/4273130
Gecko .. I think the ambience will soon be back, and probably better….
Thanks cat momma
Gecko,
The staff and the patrons at the restaurant are still the same, even if the decor has changed. 🙂
Vic
re Jill Meagher: That’s bloody awful… hopes and prayers this turns out okay.
Rossmore,
Have fun reading the comments. 🙂
C@t
But in this case the bowls on top of the soup 😆
laocoon
Once you start listening for the old fashioned priestly language/thinking that abbott uses, you hear it on a daily basis. This is how he thinks. My ear is sensitive to this because of the mis-pleasure of a strict catholic upbringing and rejecting people like abbott. I’d love to see some interviewer get under his skin on this – as Sheridan showed this week, it is a potential chink in the armour underneath which lies a complete loon. The libs (and not the ‘limbs’ as my ipad spellcheck would have it) are now full of DLP types, and abbott will promote more – Bernardi will come back after some ‘penance’. A former friend from school who became more radically catholic and politically far right as I went the other way (& who tragically died in a car accident – his politics were increasingly toxic, but he was a great bloke when I first got to know him) was a DLP-type catholic, and at time of his death was an abbott adviser. Had he not died I do not doubt he’d be in parliament today awaiting promotion. I am sure he was not alone. There are many catholics and ex-catholics who are very sensitive to these sorts, and I think further exposure of Abbott’s old writings and quotes, and some questions drawn from Santamaria articles and abbott’s support of these could bring out his real loopiness. It’d be interesting to see where abbott stood on apartheid – the NCC backed the whites to the hilt because the ANC and archbishop Tutu were communists. same for Marcos, Pinochet, and other monsters – be inetresting to see if Abbott ever put something into print or onto air on these. or was he too busy on his homophobic mission (& let’s not get into the psychology of a ‘man’s man’/rugger bugger/former trainee priest like abbott being so hung up on this issue)
Gecko,
You, of all of us, should be able to cling to the wall, upside down, in order to eat the soup. 🙂