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.
I do like Bleich. He is human and not pompous at all.
[Modlib
It will be declared 1830 on election night.]
Now, be fair rummel….unlikely to be that early :devil:
fess
Geoffrey Bleich is a fine man. A thorough gentlmen and a credit to the US.
Australia now lead India by 28.Shame about the 9 wickets down.
Carr doing well on the aggresive Assange question.
“@Pollytics: Bob hasn’t been this specious since he let Obeid walk all over him and called it leadership #qanda”
frednk@3044
Evidence please?
Nice work Carr on assange.
Love to see Henriques go on for a ton from here.
Bem jogado companheiro!
rummel
And Turnbull has been quite respectful to Carr.
Is anyone else thoroughly sick of Julian Assange? Me, i think there are probably more serious issues happening in this election year.
imacca
I completely agree.
Player One@3055
I have met Lindsay Tanner and I am no Lindsay Tanner. 😀
Where is JBishop, or has she been replaced as LOTOFM by MT?
What’s the record for a last-wicket partnership?
[3110
BK
Posted Monday, February 25, 2013 at 9:58 pm | PERMALINK
rummel
And Turnbull has been quite respectful to Carr.]
He has
“@wikileaks: #qanada: FM Bob Carr’s grand jury denialism leaves him with little credibility http://t.co/rqMnvyCggI + http://t.co/Ibc9IO1tkK #auspol”
The man’s opinion
imacca:
Me too. Assange is irrelevent.
Good evening bludgers.
How goes this microcosm of the ALP nest of vipers?
All looking forward to Newspoll I see…
I guess this result will either start the game of “Snakes and Ladders” between Rudd and Gillard in a climb to the top or it will be “Gillard as usual”- do not pass go, do not collect $200
Jones talking all over Bleich as if he’s a candidate for Australia’s parliament or something.
No shame.
[What’s the record for a last-wicket partnership?]
http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/records/283526.html
Wiki leaks is like the greens, expect everyone else to be open and transparent while keeping there house bolted shut.
Sorry, a Labor candidate for Australia’s parliament.
The US has a record of Rendition they deny they do.
[Love to see Henriques go on for a ton from here.]
Henriques would like that too. He is now 75 and Australia 40 ahead.
confessions@3114
If she was watching QANDA earlier, Mesma would have been hiding behind the couch hoping no-one tweeted about it and that Malcolm didn’t try and be funny about it.
Jones being a complete FWit tonight.
Player One,
[Bugler@3801
Good post! Agree 100%.]
Posting from the future I’m so up my own arse, haha. But thank you.
I do assume that there is a happy medium between debate and discipline. I think Oppositions can get away with being disciplined, but little else. I don’t think it works closer to the election, and some resentments (against a Government) have been known to be overstated long before an election, and others understated until its too late. Brumby was particularly victim to this, IMO (sorry, very limited experience in electoral matters). I think Brumby could be an examlple of an overmanaged Government gone astray.
“@spellar: BBC reports Cardinal O’Brien has resigned”
Nathan Lyons was involved in a previous one of 87. Lad can bat.
Bleich has had enough of Juvenile Jones.
So Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Britain’s most senior RC, resigns after allegations of “inappropriate” behaviour & the Pope resigned, hmmmm,
Sounds like qanda might be worth watching for once
Turnbull – ‘Gillard’s fault’
Psephos 3115
151
guytaur
Observing Bob Carr from the other side of this wide brown land he always struck me as a wowser intellectual snob who used Laura Norda and appealing to our base instincts as his MO.
“@JulianBurnside: #qanda Bleich has forgotten the 1st amendment and the Watergate tapes case”
[I have met Lindsay Tanner and I am no Lindsay Tanner.]
Then my opinion of you goes up … a little.
And may it rain all day in Chennai tomorrow
BBC Breaking News @BBCBreaking
Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic, resigns after allegations of “inappropriate” behaviour
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21572724
guytaur
Classy!
[I think it is rank hypocrisy to say you needed to kill off a PM because the “government had lost its way”]
Just as well I’ve never said that, then.
And Gillard had to find some form of words – before February last year the party was remarkably tight lipped about why they’d removed Rudd.
When I asked one of the players, he simply reassured me that (i) it wasn’t the NSW thing of getting rid of leaders as soon as the polls went south; and (ii) there were good reasons for it.
[ and then pretend the government is “back on track” when there has been disaster after disaster under Gillard’s rule and yet apparently this can never be mentioned.]
Because the vast majority of the disasters, particularly in recent times, have in fact been decisions which could equally have been portrayed as sound.
And they are far outweighed by the really good things the government is doing (some of which are policies I’ve campaigned for for years).
poroti
Most of the time I agree regarding Mr Carr.
However he does make mistakes. Sucking up to the US here is another one.
Jones just interrupts anyone he wants.
He could have Mandela and the Dalai Lama on and it’d still be all about the gotcha.
Shorter MT: ‘waffle, waffle, waffle’
Poroti
Bob Carr was the ultimate media schmoozer ergo his bosom buddy is Conrad Black.
“@JulianBurnside: #qanda Sweden has a “witness lending” agreement with USA, UK does not. That’s the risk he faces if he is sent to Sweden”
I’m a journalist assange style, writing truth here every day on PB. Confessions is one of my favourite un-named Labor sources. 🙂
Diogenes@3068
Never having been a member of the Victorian Left I can only say that I have been told by someone who is that she is loathed in sections of the left and seen as a highly divisive figure. This is not something recent, it goes back a long time, prior to her election to Parliament.
shellbell
[Bob Carr was the ultimate media schmoozer]
I’ll pay that .
A qanda focused on foreign affairs to which the opposition sends it IT Minister.
If I were JBishop I’d be offended.