The Courier-Mail reveals a Galaxy poll of 800 Queensland respondents conducted on Wednesday and Thursday evenings shows a result for federal Labor which is better than their recent form, with Labor holding its ground from 2010 (not that that’s saying much) with 33% of the primary vote and a two-party preferred deficit of 55-45. This is the first time in a while that Labor has been able to enjoy a poll pointing to a status quo result. However, the headline-grabber is a supplementary question on how people would vote if Kevin Rudd was leader, which suggests Labor would be at 47% on the primary vote and lead 53-47. I have all sorts of problems with this kind of exercise, but you can nonetheless expect to hear a great deal of these results in the coming days. The full figures will be published in the Courier-Mail tomorrow.
UPDATE: Full results courtesy of GhostWhoVotes here. The primary vote figures are remarkably similar to the last such Galaxy poll in late November, back when Labor were thought to be on the upswing: 33% for Labor (steady), 46% for the Coalition (steady), 9% for the Greens (up one).
UPDATE 2 (25/2/13): A dire result for Labor in the latest Essential Research poll, which has the Coalition up two points to a epic 49%, Labor down one to 34% and the Greens steady on 9%, with the Coalition two-party lead blowing out from 54-46 to 56-44. Despite that, extensive questions on expectations of a Coalition government are not all that rosy, despite a net positive 10% rating for the economy: workers rights, job security, public services, and even interest rates, the cost of living and personal financial situation are all solidly in the negative. The kicker is that 57% say the government does not deserve to be re-elected, against only 26% who say it does. Thirty-six per cent said the Liberal Party was ready to govern against 45% who thought otherwise. Further questions gauge responses to policies on flexible work hours, industry and supplying mining projects, which party best represents blue-collar workers, and trust in various types of information sources.
Seat of the week: Port Adelaide
Since we already have a new thread going courtesy of Galaxy, Seat of the Week will attend to an electorate of marginal importance for which I was never planning on going to the effort of making a map.
The electorate of Port Adelaide includes Port Adelaide itself and the adjacent Le Fevre Peninsula, including the suburbs around Sempahore and Largs Bay, along with Woodville and its surrounds to the north of the city and, some distance to the north-east, a stretch of suburbs from Parfield Gardens north to Salisbury North, which are separated from the rest of the electorate by the Dry Creek industrial area. Over-quota enrolment required that the seat be pared back with the redistribution to take effect at the coming election, which has added 8000 voters around Salisbury North while removing 700 in the badlands west of Princes Highway. A little further south again, a projected 7,200 voters in a rapidly growing area from the University of South Australia campus at Mawson Lakes north to Salisbury Park have been transferred to Makin. At the southern end of the electorate, 3,300 voters around Seaton have been transferred to Hindmarsh. The changes have boosted the already handsome Labor margin from 20.0% to 21.4%.
Port Adelaide was created with the expansion of parliament in 1949 from an area that had previously made Hindmarsh a safe seat for Labor. Labor’s strength was such that the Liberals did not field candidates in 1954 and 1955, when it was opposed only by the Communist Party. Rod Sawford assumed the seat at a by-election in 1988 upon the resignation of the rather more high-profile Mick Young, member since 1974, and held it until his retirement in 2007. His successor has been Mark Butler, previously state secretary of the Left faction Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union and a descendant of two conservative state premiers: his great- and great-great-grandfathers, both of whom were called Sir Richard Butler.
Butler has quietly established himself as a rising star over his two terms in parliament, winning promotion to parliamentary secretary in June 2009 and then in the junior ministry portfolios of mental health and ageing after the 2010 election, despite his hesitancy in jumping aboard the Julia Gillard bandwagon for the June 2010 leadership coup. He was elevated to cabinet in December 2011 when social inclusion was added to his existing responsibilities, and was solidly behind Gillard when Kevin Rudd challenged her leadership two months later. Housing and homelessness were further added to his workload in the reshuffle which followed Nicola Roxon and Chris Evans’s departure in February 2013.
The Liberal candidate for the second successive election will be Nigel McKenna, a self-employed painter and decorator.
How sanity and balance?
Exactly what purpose does it all serve?
Do you guys think some Labor MP is going to stumble on this site and go ‘oh there we go – some random on the intertubes reckons Gillard’s doomed. I’m going to get caucus together and vote for Rudd.’
Fine. She might be. But carrying on like pork chops about it here doesn’t achieve a single thing.
You could convince every single poster here that Gillard was doomed, that Labor was going down the tubes, that Rudd was the saviour….and exactly what would you have achieved?
I come to this site to get ideas and arguments which will help the ALP get the best result possible in this particular seat.
In the past, I’ve been able to use the arguments and analysis of policies from both sides here to help campaign.
By now, we all know who thinks exactly what about Rudd/Gillard/Labor’s chances etc….so can we move on to useful stuff, like policy analysis?
I can go to plenty of other sites (mainly inhabited by Liberal schills) if I want the kind of negative rubbish we’re getting here.
TLBD , who’s James joyce ? or Ron ? I am trying to catch up , but many trollops here ,must be bad for LNP internal polling ?
@abcnews: Protest votes raise uncertainty in Italian election. Voting to end midnight (AEDT time) http://t.co/WCmKIilPBC
“@AuSenate: The Senate has agreed to the Electoral and Referendum (Improving Electoral Procedure) Bill without amendment”
[Rossmore
Posted Monday, February 25, 2013 at 8:55 pm | PERMALINK
Remember comrades, this is the lady who wont lie down and die.]
But if she keeps standing, the ALP might die…
rua
Its Justice Rares again.
Thanks for the lecture Fran, but I do know what Peak Oil is. Only you could spend three erudite paragraphs saying you don’t know the answer to a fairly simple question. And yes, I know about Mr Hubbert’s graphs too. The point is that Peak Oil has spent 70 years receding into the future as more and more reserves of the stuff are found. Of course there is a finite amount of oil, but the amount known to exist is now many times larger than it was when Peak Oil was first confidently predicted, and there’s no reason why that shouldn’t continue for quite a long time. The age of the earth is finite, too, but that’s not a matter of immediate concern to many of us.
[In addition, a coalition government would provide $150 million for “geothermal, tidal and solar towns and schools”.]
What’s a tidal school and how much does one cost?
absolutetwaddle@2998
OK, it’s all clear to me now.
Kevin Rudd was behind ‘cash for clunkers’.
Kevin Rudd inspired the ‘citizens assembly’.
Kevin Rudd forced the ‘moving forward’ mantra on her.
Kevin Rudd insisted on the ‘Real Julia’.
Yes, it was all Kev.
Z
[I come to this site to get ideas and arguments which will help the ALP get the best result possible in this particular seat.]
I imagine that’s not the reason most people come here.
LBB
😆 @ Trollops
Picture the 2010 campaign without Rudd leaking like a sieve to any journalist who would listen (ie, all of them).
Maybe uninspiring. Maybe a little boring. A small target kind of affair. NOT the ‘disaster’ for Labor Rudd and his supporters adeptly manufactured.
confessions
[Ch7 news report on approaching cyclone Rusty emphasises the queues out the door at liquor stores.
Priorities, Port Hedland style.]
Totally unchanged in decades. Pilbara priority one after a cyclone Blue Alert warning was deciding where the “cyclone party” was to be. A Yellow Alert made for a mad dash to make sure suffient beer supplies were delivered to the venue and that people and beer were in place before the Red Alert when nothing was allowed to move.
[ but many trollops here ,must be bad for LNP internal polling ?]
I’m not a trollop but I’m certain that I am bad for LNP polling.
LBB,
James Augusta Aloysius Joyce
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_joyce
Stream of consciousness bloke.
I thought Hubbert predicted America’s oil peak being in the 1970’s, and was right. New reserves are being found, but at depths far below that of the gulf of mexico where the last major spill happened
confessions, I suspect you do a world of good for LNP polling actually! 🙂
The story of Sam on 4Corners is heartbreaking
2998
absolutetwaddle
[However, quoting someone who says the 2010 election campaign was a ‘disaster’ WITHOUT mentioning it was being actively sabotaged by Rudd from beginning to end struck me as odd.]
struck me as odd
Your restraint and civility does you credit.
Gillard was travelling quite well in that election campaign, before the internal sabotage started.
WB , your ” Don’t feed the trolls” sign has fell down .
guytaur
[
poroti
Yes the cost of oil will be its downfall.]
As part of my pennance for my “big oil” sins I am now involved with biogas projects 🙂 First project went “live ” today.
poroti:
Sounds like the laconic north.
The concept of Peak Cheap Oil is much more useful than Peak Oil.
They are making petrol synthetically now on a small scale.
Chard,
There is the odd bod who knows about peak oil.
Do you know how to google?
[OK, it’s all clear to me now.
Kevin Rudd was behind ‘cash for clunkers’.
Kevin Rudd inspired the ‘citizens assembly’.
Kevin Rudd forced the ‘moving forward’ mantra on her.
Kevin Rudd insisted on the ‘Real Julia’.
Yes, it was all Kev.]
What do you call a group who stab a PM in the back (first term PM after a decade in the wilderness) for no reason apart from a self centered factional power play…..THEN immediately set about slagging him to death in over drive…
No other words for that type of group except factional scum. Is it any wonder the public quickly began to lose trust in them….and haven’t got it back since. The public momentarily glimpsed the creatures in the shadows and many still haven’t forgotten.
Mdia Watch time
How much crap is going to be exposed tonight. (crap as in do not write crap)
Mod Lib:
You’re right.
Convention be damned, and I should own my inner trollop! 😀
Mrs Miller:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw07CDid0JM&noredirect=1
Zoomster,
[By now, we all know who thinks exactly what about Rudd/Gillard/Labor’s chances etc….so can we move on to useful stuff, like policy analysis?]
That is why I come too, but lately I have become rather prone to being baited than I am pretty much anywhere else. I am unfortunately well aware of how little I am contributing to the overall discussion, and how I’ve convinced no one, and yet do it anyway. *sigh*
poroti
Yay!! As for your sins you do have the excuse of ignorance that a lot of us had until those extremists that hug trees got science to inform us.
Bemused
All of those announcements were forgotten before votes were even cast. They were dull and uninspiring but not exactly gaffes of any notable scale. Also more than matched by Tony “Believe What I Write Not What I Say” Abbott’s dismal performance.
The leaks on the other hand gave Abbott the best chance he’s had to date of becoming PM. They were hugely damaging.
As someone who is a Rudd supporter could you elaborate on any kind of justification he may have had in doing this? Or do you believe it was out of character?
tlbd
most of what I know on the subject comes from reading the likes of Richard Heinberg
Diog
I bet they don’t come here to be told yet again that Gillard is Doomed, either.
Site’s getting to be a waste of time.
[Gillard was travelling quite well in that election campaign, before the internal sabotage started.]
Yeh her first speech with the dog whistle, up to the patrol boats repelling the hoards, Timor solution debacle and the rest….probably the worst campaign ever.
If her group got a kick in the arse from Rudd supporters it was more than well and truly deserved… since all she was fronting for was faction power over democracy.
2978
ruawake
[In an interview with Richard Fidler {Savva} admits she stitched up Mick Young with a story she knew to be false, but it was too good not to print.]
That there is straight corruption.
Feel free to sue me, Ms Savva.
The impact of the leaks, whereever they may have come from, on the 2010 campaign have been grossly overstated as part of the elaborate narrative used to justify, retrospectively, the disastrous train of events starting with the 2009 coup. The ordinary punter didn’t really give a toss about those things.
[Psephos
Posted Monday, February 25, 2013 at 9:13 pm | Permalink
Thanks for the lecture Fran, but I do know what Peak Oil is. Only you could spend three erudite paragraphs saying you don’t know the answer to a fairly simple question. And yes, I know about Mr Hubbert’s graphs too. The point is that Peak Oil has spent 70 years receding into the future as more and more reserves of the stuff are found. ]
Oil production peaked in the USA in the 70’s just as Hubbert predicted.
Here be the list of major fields.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_fields
Note the scarcities of the recent discoveries, and the decline in most major fields.
Now compare that against demand:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_oil_consumption_1980_to_2007_by_region.svg
Basically cheap energy is over.
[ OK, it’s all clear to me now.
Kevin Rudd was behind ‘cash for clunkers’.
Kevin Rudd inspired the ‘citizens assembly’.
Kevin Rudd forced the ‘moving forward’ mantra on her.
Kevin Rudd insisted on the ‘Real Julia’.
Yes, it was all Kev. ]
These are all strawmen. None of these was of significant impact. But Kevin was apparently responsible for much more damaging stuff during the 2010 campaign – and since, by some accounts.
The trouble with Oz politics is not that we have an imbecilic LOTO saying “give me the job or I’ll wreck the joint” – we actually have one of these destructive cretins on both sides of politics.
It’s enough to make you vote Green!
Oh, and if the ALP is going to die because of Gillard (what a load of rubbish; I didn’t believe the Libs would die after 2007, when they were out of power virtually everywhere, and I don’t believe Labor will die because of a run of poor election results, either) it will die even quicker if it goes for the populist button pushing a return to Rudd would demonstrate.
As I’ve said before, it’s rank hypocrisy to argue on one hand that the party needs to stand for something (which your party of preference certainly doesn’t, ML) on one hand and that it should bring back Rudd (regardless of the consequences) because he’s popular.
[zoomster
Posted Monday, February 25, 2013 at 9:22 pm | Permalink
Diog
I bet they don’t come here to be told yet again that Gillard is Doomed, either.
Site’s getting to be a waste of time.]
The very goal of concern trolls.
alias
Without the leaks the stuff up with boats policy would have done what it was intended to do. Minimise damage.
It was never a positive. Remember how big Boats was in that election.
Diogenes
[They are making petrol synthetically now on a small scale]
Not so small.Young Adolph went in for that and later yaarpie apartheid Seth Efrika used the technology.As part of Piggy Muldoon’s “Think Big” policy NZ also went down the track
[The Synfuel plant takes natural gas from both the offshore Maui, and the onshore Kapuni, gas fields and converts the combined gas feed first to methanol, and then to synthetic gasoline via the Mobil Methanol-to-gasoline (MTG) process.]
http://www.ipenz.org.nz/heritage/itemdetail.cfm?itemid=68
absolutetwaddle@3011
Mumble did a good analysis of the effect of the ‘leaks’ and concluded about zero effect.
[ Oil production peaked in the USA in the 70′s just as Hubbert predicted. ]
Yes, it seems to me that we may already have reached “peak oil”, but some of us have not noticed it yet – mainly because the reduction in demand (due to the GFC) combined with a small shift to renewables (inspired by AGW) is just managing (for the moment) to keep prices within reasonable bounds.
But this might change quickly, i.e. as soon as the world hits it’s economic straps once again.
Mediawatch
attacking Neilson poll reporting
[ bemused
Posted Monday, February 25, 2013 at 9:28 pm | Permalink
..
Mumble did a good analysis of the effect of the ‘leaks’ and concluded about zero effect.]
Really doens’t matter, if Rudd did it, he is no prime minister material.
Guytaur.. The great irony is that in suggesting that boats was a big deal in the 2010 election you are taking us back to polling, and the notion that it’s smart to act in line with the message from the polls, which right now is …
alias
See Media watch now!!!!
[Player One
Posted Monday, February 25, 2013 at 9:29 pm | Permalink
…
But this might change quickly, i.e. as soon as the world hits it’s economic straps once again.]
Yes how quickly we forget the race to $2.00 a litre just before the GFC.
[Mumble did a good analysis of the effect of the ‘leaks’ and concluded about zero effect.]
As I point out every time you say this, he did in fact observe a sharp swing away from Labor after the second leak, but offered that he “just reckoned” it would have happened anyway.
I have a sinking feeling that NewsPoll will come in at about 57 or 58 for the Opposition.
[However, quoting someone who says the 2010 election campaign was a ‘disaster’ WITHOUT mentioning it was being actively sabotaged by Rudd from beginning to end struck me as odd.]
To be accurate, sabotaged by Tanner, probably on Rudd’s orders, although perhaps on his own initiative, since his hatred of Gillard goes back to some obscure sexual-political intrigue in the Socialist Left.