Morgan has published results from a phone poll of 523 respondents conducted between Tuesday and Thursday, which have Labor on 36.5% of the primary vote, the Coalition on 44.5% and the Greens on 8.5%. Morgan’s headline two-party result is 51-49, but this comes from the dubious respondent-allocated preferences measure: the more reliable measure using preferences from the previous election has the Coalition’s lead at 52.5-47.5. This being a phone poll, it should not have the Labor bias associated with Morgan’s face-to-face polling. It also reverses the consistent trend of the face-to-face series in giving Labor the better result on respondent-allocated preferences (I have consistently had grave doubts about the face-to-face polling on this score). However, the poll shows no gap in voting intention between men and women, which perhaps illustrates the difficulties you can get with small samples. The margin of error on the poll is about 4.3%.
Morgan has also taken on the tricky job of framing questions appropriate to the knotty AWU matter. The most useful of these asks if respondents approve or disapprove of Gillard’s response, coming in at 37% and 28% respectively. A question on whether the Prime Minister should resign if “scandal allegations are true” has 43% saying she should against 27% saying she shouldn’t, but this rather overlooks the enormous range of the allegations that might be levelled (had they started a few days later they could simply have asked if respondents agreed with Christopher Pyne). Another question asks whether Gillard “was aware that the AWU ‘slush-fund’ was illegal when she resigned from Slater & Gordon in 1995”, which seems simplistic at best. Thirty-three per cent answered in the affirmative (including 10% of Labor voters and 20% of a tiny sample of Greens voters) against 26% negative, 17% couldn’t say and 24% not aware of the scandal.
There is also an entertaining plethora of questions on preferred party leaders, the chief head-to-head scorelines being Gillard 49 Abbott 36, Turnbull 59 Gillard 31, Gillard 46 Hockey 44, and Turnbull 54 Rudd 38. Not featured: Gillard versus Rudd or Abbott versus Turnbull.
Seat of the week: Perth
The electorate of Perth extends north-eastwards from the city centre to accommodate an area bounded to the south by the Swan River, extending from Mount Lawley and Maylands to Morley and Bassendean. An electorate bearing the name has existed since federation, with the entirety of the metropolitan area having been divided between it and Fremantle until the expansion of parliament in 1949. It then assumed more familiar dimensions, with Swan being drawn into the metropolitan area and Curtin created to accommodate the western suburbs.
Perth was held from its creation until 1922 by James Fowler, first as a Labor member and then as a Liberal and Nationalist following his defection in 1909. It thereafter remained in conservative hands until the Labor landslide of 1943, when it was won by Tom Burke (father of Brian). Burke held the seat until defeated in 1955 by Liberal candidate Fred Chaney Senior, whose son Fred Chaney Junior was a Fraser government minister, Senator and member for Pearce. Chaney was in turn unseated in 1969 by Joe Berinson, who became a junior minister in the Whitlam government and later a state Attorney-General. When the 1975 debacle cost Labor all its WA seats except for Fremantle, Berinson suffered a narrow defeat at the hands of Liberal candidate Ross McLean.
Redistributions in 1977 and 1990 respectively reoriented the seat westwards to the advantage of the Liberals and eastwards to the advantage of Labor. Australian hockey captain Ric Charlesworth was able to gain and hold the seat for Labor in the more difficult conditions after 1983, and Stephen Smith came to a seat with a solid Labor margin when he succeeded Charlesworth in 1993. It continued to trend in Labor’s favour thereafter, remarkably producing a slight positive swing amid the 1996 landslide, and surpassed Fremantle as Labor’s safest WA seat at the 2010 election. However, such has been the party’s progressive malaise in WA over the past decade that the margin has worn down to 5.9%.
Stephen Smith had been an adviser to Paul Keating and a state party secretary before entering parliament, emerging as a senior figure in the Right faction. He was elevated to the front bench after the 1996 defeat, and became Foreign Minister when the Rudd government came to power in 2007. He relinquished this role with displeasure when it was given to Kevin Rudd after the 2010 election, instead being assigned to defence. His desire to return to the foreign ministry was thwarted when Bob Carr was drafted after Kevin Rudd’s failed leadership challenge in February 2012. Smith also served as Trade Minister from Julia Gillard’s ascension to the prime ministership in June 2010 until the reshuffle which followed the subsequent election.
A Liberal preselection in June 2012 was won by Darryl Moore, a former mining engineer now involved in “investing in and managing the family’s commercial and industrial real estate portfolio”, ahead of Geoff Hourn, a former lieutenant-colonel in the Australian Intelligence Corps.
Mod Lib:
You can believe whatever you like, but it’s actually true.
Joe6Pack,
We back onto a national park
I live across the road from a National Park on an acreage with Remnant Temperate Rainforest as my backyard. We too have all manner of native wildlife around the place. Which is why we forsook pets years ago. I have even seen an echidna walk past and a gigantic Blue Tongue Lizard sunning itself on a fallen tree by the billabong out back. Too good!
Except for the bluddy Bush Turkey who has appropriated whatever cleared space on the edge of the forest I had for his mound to impress the ladeez. 🙂
I’d like to think Senator Smith is a moderate Liberal, but when I met him he was quite happy to play along with Cormann’s idiocy about the cold weather, suggesting AGW is not a scientific reality.
He is also opposed to same sex marriage, as a gay man. Although Tim Wilson is also opposed to SSM, and he too is gay.
boerwar
You are in the electorate of Eden Monaro. Psephos said earlier that this seat would be lost to the coalition at the next election. What say you?
Who cares about a putative Liberal Ministry? There’s no possibility of one for a while yet. Maybe 1 or 2 elections, if they get their act together. Compared to the policy might of the Labor Party they are like a bunch of kindergarten kids with crayons, hard-pressed to even spell the word ‘policy’.
C@tmomma
We still have the pets.
2 cats the older girls, and 2 silly jackabee doggies.
They are the true owners of the house.
[secco @MikeSeccombe
Pleased to see some among the MSM appear now to be following Margo and me, by broaching the subject of Abbott’s own slush fund. About time.]
[margo kingston @margokingston1
@MikeSeccombe No MSM coverage yet? Will there be, you reckon?]
@C@omma/505
I think Mod Lib is trying to detract us from the REAL ISSUES.
[Compared to the policy might of the Labor Party they are like a bunch of kindergarten kids with crayons, hard-pressed to even spell the word ‘policy’.]
Wasn’t Ms Bishop heading the policy renewal branch of the Stupid Old Party? The SOPs were suckered on that one. Or was it Kevin Andrews or Andrew Robb. Policy Giants. 😆
Whyalla wiped out.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-01/sa-storm-leaves-thousands-of-homes-without-power/4402668
😀
detract = distract.
Not just JG making news OS
The government is the trendsetter
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/01/plain-packaging-australian-cigarette-tobacco
The Aussies in creams are being creamed.
Mal Washer is, by all accounts, a good bloke in spite of his membership of the Liberal Party.
Mod Lib@440
“heavy with moderates”? Surely you jest.
But I see you got one thing right. Scott Morrison left with nothing to do. Talent recognised! 😛
The Australians certainly aren’t going to be saved by the rain in Perth during December, that’s for sure.
zoidlord@508
I think at this point most of us are looking for a distraction from what’s been going on. The parliamentary year is over, and the last week was frankly a disgraceful effort from a Liberal party that had already set the bar very low.
If Mod Lib wants to fantasise about a Turnbull governnment that’s fine with me. What else can a Liberal supporter do the way the party is right now? You can’t support it as it is. It’s a horrorshow under Abbott.
It still doesn’t alter the fact that the path from here to a Turnbull leadership is almost impossible to traverse. The party don’t seem to want him, and they’ve given him nothing to work with.
When Hawke replaced Hayden, Hayden rightly said that a drover’s dog could have led the party to victory. I’m not sure the Liberals will be in any such shape when and if Turnbull is allowed near the leadership. He’ll only get a shot if Abbott has made them completely unelectable.
confessions,
Tim Wilson Blocked me on Twitter because I had the audacity to suggest this expensive tea pot he was boasting about having just bought was going to be essentially useless because it’s construction and materials were of such a kind as to be the sort that ends up with a broken lid very quickly. Looked good though. 😀
Mod Lib
the liberals would be a bigger rabble under turnbull as they are under abbott
there would be no unity
C@tmomma @ 518
LOL
Meguire Bob@519
If they ever agree within themselves to re-elect him LOTO.
Many have told the media they would rather cut an arm off than have him back as leader.
He could only go back on the condition that the party back him on carbon trading and its difficult to see them accepting that.
C@t:
😆
[A rabbi has been extradited from the US to face child-sex charges in Melbourne.
David Kramer, 52, faces allegations he abused four boys while he was teaching at Yeshivah College in St Kilda East between 1989 and 1992.]
Waits for Rabbi condemnation …. crickets???
Of course, the Return of Malcolm fails because the people he needs to vote for him are the same ones he would need to demote to fulfill ModLib’s fantasies.
There aren’t enough moderates to get him over the line.
He may have lost by one vote last time, but that was in a very different party room – anyone elected in 2010 will tend to believe they owe their seat to Abbott.
Reminder for those interested
[@MeetThePress10 Last show for the year @JuliaGillard top panel @PatsKarvelas,@rafaelepstein Sunday 10.30am on TEN #MTP10]
How unsurprisement.
[@MeetThePress10 @JuliaGillard @PatsKarvelas Tony Abbott is on the Bolt Report, you should watch @MTP10 for balance.]
v
boerwar
You are in the electorate of Eden Monaro. Psephos said earlier that this seat would be lost to the coalition at the next election. What say you?
I say that Psephos would know about 1000% better than I would.
Hi Briefly,
So the Griener / Brumby GST review has found that the GST carve up is fair.
Colin Barnett looks like a bit self serving moron now.
http://www.theglobalmail.org/blog/in-politics-slush-happens/505/
boerwar
It is bye bye to Mike Kelly then
ruawake@481
The problem is that those holding power are mostly those that need to be removed. That is one reason why I believe it has to be imposed from outside. The other is the speed with which it has to become public perception that it is being done.
[Boerwar
Posted Saturday, December 1, 2012 at 8:26 pm | Permalink
v
boerwar
You are in the electorate of Eden Monaro. Psephos said earlier that this seat would be lost to the coalition at the next election. What say you?
I say that Psephos would know about 1000% better than I would.]
Psephos reckons spending a few more billion stopping boats is the way to win. Psephos is as wrong now as he was 40 years ago.
[I would certainly dump Swan and Gillard but there would be room for Mark Butler and Mike Kelly]
Typical dumb- as- dogshit Lib. Never let the facts get in the way of the ideology.
Australia has near enough the best economy of developed nations. Who do you reckeon did that?
Gillard formed Government and the Libs couldn’t.
Obviously you vote for losers.
frednk@532
Hmmmm well he actually got it right 40 years ago so you must think he is right now. 😀
Aguirre @ 517, you are correct, as usual.
It is strange to think of, but I now see the LNP as curious fantasists. There is nothing moderate about the LNP in Canberra. They have become a clan of fear and intrigue. They offer the country no more than cynicism, bitterness and rejection. This is the sum of their political dowry.
A vote for the LNP is an endorsement of lip service as an end in itself. They clearly do not believe in ideas or policies or values or anything more than mere “polemics and tactics”. They ask us to accept that nothing of value can be accomplished in Canberra. Their appeal is to resistance, to doubt, to fatigue, and finally to reverie and disengagement.
[528
ShowsOn
Hi Briefly,
So the Griener / Brumby GST review has found that the GST carve up is fair.
Colin Barnett looks like a bit self serving moron now.]
Ha! Ask a Victorian and a NSWelshman if they would like more money from WA and guess the answer.
The guts of it is that fiscal equalisation used to be achieved from the Commonwealth revenue. Now it is funded between the states without any charge on the Commonwealth. This was Howard’s fiscal pea-and-thumble trick. It worked. A century after federation, the fiscal compact was abolished by a Liberal. Whowouldaguessed.
[This was Howard’s fiscal pea-and-thumble trick. ]
Yep one of his bigger con jobs.
ModLib # 425, if you were a senator and decent person like Marise stuck with the current LOTO and his gang of idiots, wouldnt you be pretty silent too?
I havent had much to do with her recently but from what I know she remains a nice person and a genuine liberal (socially liberal, economic dry)and way more talented than lots of the coalition front bench zombies.
One of the few from the other side i would consider for a government of national unity – Hunt wouldnt make it having so thoroughly betrayed his intellect and beliefs on the small matter of the fate of the f..king planet
ruawake@509,
Wasn’t Ms Bishop heading the policy renewal branch of the Stupid Old Party? The SOPs were suckered on that one. Or was it Kevin Andrews or Andrew Robb. Policy Giants. 😆
Don’t forget Joe Hockey said they had ’49 policies in the Liberal Party’s bottom drawer, ready to go!’
I imagine these are the ones Tony Abbott has been promising us. However, there are those that Mr Positive Leadership has already released, such as his(hat tip to Jackol 😀 ), MMMRPG(Massive Multiples of Motorways Road Program Grandiosity), which will feebly entrench Private Transport even more over Public Transport, as we are already at the Climate Change Cliff and beyond Peak Oil. So, it would have thus been smarter to have announced an integrated Transport policy suite. The Coalition are too in the pocket of the Fossil Fuel Industry still it seems for something like that.
Also, such a policy, whose Costing has obdurately been refused to be outlined along with the policy itself by the Opposition, will no doubt be along the lines of the now failed Greiner Model of the Public/Private Tollway, as the Liberal Budget kitty is notoriously bare.
Then there’s the ‘policies’, such as they are, which are purely and simply vanity projects for Abbott, such as his ‘Mine’s Bigger Than Yours’ PPL Scheme. Also crafted to earn him extra Brownie Points with the ladeez, and smart one of which has already seen right through it as the vote bribe that it is. Not to mention the fact that it is discriminatory. Which women have a long history of sniffing out when it comes to paying more or less for their work. As in, women who earn more under this scheme will get more from it, and women on lower pay won’t get nearly as much.
Of course, when we consider their Foreign Affairs, Trade and Immigration policies, they can probably be summed up by the term ‘Neo Colonialism’. With a touch of ‘New Brutalism’ on Immigration to satisfy the Xenophobes and Bigots.
Manufacturing Policy? zoomster is probably the expert on the Coalition in this area. 🙂
Suffice to say, from where I sit, it looks like a very crude form of Social Darwinism to me. Sink or swim. If China or some other external territory can do it cheaper, so be it. Except where it comes to vanity industries attached to the Australian Agrarian Nirvana they wish to create to satisfy their National Party MPs, like Dairy, Wine, Sugar, Cotton, Wheat, Wool etc refining and production.
Elaborately-transformed Goods like cars? No way. Too much Union control of the shop floor.
The Environment will be sacrificed to the God of Mining.
I’d be interested to hear what they have up their sleeves for Small Business, over and above an appeal to the slave drivers who love nothing more than a Free Trainee on a rolling basis, and the opportunity to slash pay and conditions and sack at will for no good reason and get away with it.
As has been said elsewhere, Labor have been working hard at getting Small Business onside.
Health? What could they offer there? This fanciful notion of atomised ‘Letting a 1000 Flowers Bloom’ policy, otherwise known as Local Health Boards, which will have no economies of scale, and will probably end up, like TAFES in Queensland, being sold to consortiums once they have been severed from Public and government control.
Not to mention, a return of the Private Health Industry to sucking massive subsidies from the taxpayer teat. Plus herding and corralling people over to Private Health Insurance again.
And selling the Private Health Insurer Price Anchor, Medibank Private.
Education? Interesting. To support Gonski, or not to support Gonski, that is the question. 🙂
Of course we know about the faux Climate Change policy, which is just glorified and badly-disguised, Fossil Fuel Industry Support.
I’d be interested to hear if you had your own ideas.
Reading the various posts today it seems we now have a sharp dichotomy between those posters such as Briefly, Meguire Bob and a few others who are utterly convinced that JG is not only going to win but will sh*t it in and one or two like Psephos who are equally convinced that the government is going to lose. I’ve read Psephos’s reasoning (ie that there are a number of seats in Western Sydney that appear to be unwinnable and without them the government can’t win)and it is hard to argue with that. So with that obstacle to overcome, perhaps those who are full of confidence might like to share their theory on how the government can do that. I am genuinely interested.
[Education? Interesting. To support Gonski, or not to support Gonski, that is the question. :)]
They are in favour of education as long as they don’t have to pay for it. In fact, they support everything for everyone, as long as there is no bill attached. Which really means they don’t want Commonwealth $ invested in social or economic programs of any kind.
v
I hope not. We will be handing out HTVCs for Mr Kelly.
[The Aussies in creams are being creamed.]
Yeah really! Such a turnaround from the position at the start of play.
Darn, I think the climate has changed substantially in the last few months. So much so that Labor can easily win. They have things running the right way – policies, the economy, leadership and party unity. But Psephos is correct too. Labor has to revive their fortunes in NSW. If this can be done, Labor will achieve a great win at the next election.
C@
It’s a fault of our ignorant media that no one realises what a shonk the local health boards idea is.
The fact is, Victoria has had them since Kennett. (Ditto local school boards, which is also a Liberal promise).
Yet even Victorian Liberals tout these policies as something new and different – demonstrating their ignorance of the way basic services work.
First problem, of course, is constitutional. It’s up to the states to run hospitals and schools and they fight like tigers when someone tries to take some of this responsibility of their hands. (After all, take away health and education and there goes most of their responsibilities as well as their cash).
Secondly, school and hospital boards create extra expense for schools and hospitals. Board members don’t cost much but we’re talking decentralisation of power here – instead of one state payroll for nurses, for example, in Victoria each hospital has their own pay system. Which means they have to have a Finance Manager.
(The same, to a more limited extent, with schools, where some staff are paid from the central payroll and others are employed directly by the school).
The Libs policy implies that all you have to do to fix virtually every problem with schools and hospitals is to add local boards. If that’s the case, then Victoria’s health and education systems must be the best in the nation.
As a Victorian, I’m proud to agree with that assessment — but I have a sneaking feeling it’s all more complicated than that….
Boerwar,
When you see Mike Kelly next, tell him there’s a family on the Central Coast for whom he will always be their ‘Mr Movember’. 🙂
I see that nasty, biased, Ruddster – Peter Hartcher – was full of praise for JG today, pointing up her strengths and Abbott’s failures.
I suppose the JG cheer squad will now be happy that he has ‘come to his senses’ and fallen in line with them.
Hartcher can be relied upon to give an objective analysis of the political situation much to the annoyance sometimes of his haters on this site.
Darn@540
It is all ‘faith based’.
Polls at present still point to an ALP loss. They are the only objective indicator.
A whole lot of scenarios could unfold between now and an election. The Libs could implode. The Libs could replace Abbott and get a boost from it. The ALP led by JG could continue chipping away at the Libs and get in front. Dramatic events could turn NSW around etc.
I of course hope for continuing ALP improvement leading to a victory. But I try not to confuse hope with reality and will be guided by objective evidence as it emerges.
Speaking of the ignorant media, two leading lights have just put out articles very negative of Tony Abbott. Can you hear the drums Fernando?
Laurie Oakes
http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/this-parliament-put-the-Christmas-grinch-out-of-work/
Michelle Grattan
http://www.watoday.com.au/opinion/politics/abbott-has-his-own-slushy-history-20121201-2anjy.html
Well well well. Ms Grattan on the Abbott slush fund
[MANY readers will recall Margo Kingston, a deft hand at investigative reporting and a pioneer of interactive journalism through her Webdiary. Margo left the trade a while ago and is studying nursing, interested in specialising in palliative care.
But last week, watching from afar the AWU affair unfolding, she leapt back into the fray with an online article. She remembered what many of us, in the heat of this slush fund battle, had forgotten. Tony Abbott has had his own slush fund experience, not all of it happy.]
Read more: http://www.watoday.com.au/opinion/politics/abbott-has-his-own-slushy-history-20121201-2anjy.html#ixzz2DnI7CfVt