James J in comments relates Newspoll’s first quarterly South Australian state voting intention result since Steven Marshall assumed the Liberal leadership shows the Liberal lead increasing from 51-49 to 54-46, from primary votes of 33% for Labor (down four), 44% for the Coalition (up three) and 10% for the Greens (up one). Jay Weatherill’s personal ratings show his approval down three to 46% and disapproval up two to 34%. Steven Marshall’s debut figures are 37% approve and 19% disapprove. Weatherill leads as preferred premier 42-27. The sample was an unusually small 586, for an unusually high margin of error of around 4%, presumably because only polling conducted since Marshall became leader on February 4 has been included.
The Liberals have been busy with preselections over the past few months, selecting the following candidates:
• Stephan Knoll, manager of Barossa Fine Foods, in the safe Liberal Barossa Valley seat of Schubert, to be vacated by the retirement of Ivan Venning. It was earlier reported the preselection was being delayed to keep an option open for Alexander Downer, but such talk has faded since Steven Marshall assumed the leadership.
• Joe Barry, a police officer aligned with Christopher Pyne’s moderate faction, for the western suburbs seat of Colton, held by Labor’s Paul Caica on a margin of 3.9%. Barry was chosen at the expense of Jassmine Wood, who ran for the federal seat of Hindmarsh in 2010 and was initially rated as the front-runner. Her fortunes changed in November when a motion moved by Pyne at state executive resolved to reopen nominations to allow Barry to run. Wood lodged an appeal against her eventual defeat, complaining she had earlier lobbied Barry confidentially without knowing she would be facing him as an opponent.
• Carolyn Habib, a 32-year-old Marion councillor, for the inner southern Adelaide seat of Elder. The seat is held for Labor on a margin of 1.7% by former senior minister Patrick Conlon, who quit cabinet in January and will bow out at the election. Conlon has attracted considerable criticism of late for taking up a three-day-a-week position with law firm Minter Ellison while continuing to serve in parliament. Labor is yet to choose his successor, but government adviser Mary-Lou Corcoran and lawyer Adrian Tisato have been mentioned as possible contenders.
• Corey Wingard, former presenter of a football program on Channel Ten, for the southern suburbs seat of Mitchell, where Labor’s Alan Sibbons unseated Labor-turned-Greens-turned-independent member Kris Hanna at the 2010 election, and holds a post-redistribution two-party preferred margin of 2.4%. Earlier reports suggested the nomination might again go to the candidate from 2010, chartered accountant Peta McCance.
• Kendall Jackson, former ABC rural reporter who left last year to manage the Flinders Rest Hotel in Warnertown, to run against independent Geoff Brock in the Port Pirie and Clare Valley seat of Frome.
• Local earth-moving business owner Cosie Costa to again run in the Gawler area seat of Light, despite a disappointing showing in 2010 when Labor member Tony Piccolo added 3.2% to his margin. The Labor margin after the redistribution is 4.2%.
• Norwood, Payneham and St Peters councillor Vincent Tarzia to run in the eastern Adelaide seat of Hartley, held for Labor by Grace Portolesi on a diminished post-redistribution margin of 0.5%. Associated with Christopher Pyne and the moderate faction, Tarzia easily won an October preselection with 79 votes against 11 for Campbelltown councillor Marijka Ryan and 10 for Joe Scalzi, who held the seat from 1993 until his defeat in 2006 and again ran unsuccessfully in 2010.
• Marion deputy mayor David Speirs for Bright, after winning an October preselection vote at the expense of Maria Kourtesis, the narrowly unsuccessful candidate in 2010, by 38 votes to 34. Bright covers coastal suburbs immediately south of Glenelg and is held for Labor by Chloe Fox. The redistribution has turned Fox’s 0.4% margin into a notional Liberal margin of 0.1%.
• Scott Roberts, a 32-year-old banker and Prospect councillor, for the inner northern Adelaide seat of Enfield, held for Labor by John Rau on a margin of 10.2%.
Labor preselection news:
• Stephen Mullighan, deputy chief-of-staff to the Premier and member of the Right, has been chosen to replace the retiring Michael Wright in the northern Adelaide seat of Lee, where the margin is 7.9%.
• Australian Services Union state secretary Katrine Hildyard has been preselected to succeed the retiring Gay Thompson in Reynell, a southern suburbs seat with a margin of 10.6%.
• Daniel Wills of The Advertiser reports the activities of Frances Bedford, which included joining a protest rally against the government’s awarding of stationery contracts to multinational rather than local companies, have resulted in pressure to have her dumped in her north-eastern Adelaide seat of Florey. Her mooted replacement is Justin Hanson, an industrial officer for the Australian Workers Union and the son of the union’s state secretary Wayne Hanson. However, “many Labor insiders are fearful Ms Bedford would run as an independent”.
That’s more realistic.
It shows the Libs will more than likely win but not a ridiculously huge margin that’s reserved only for the worst governments…
I will wait till the Libs get over excited and start eating their young.Steven Marshall will eventually do something stupid as they always do in this erratic shambles of a party.Labor by a neck…..
Frances Bedford is safe in Florey … precisely because she would run – and win – as an Independent.
Lots of hot air coming from the factions, but no-one is seriously game to take her on.
Very excited about Katrine Hildyard and Stephen Mullighan winning pre-selection. They will be a great local members 🙂
On the Liberal side … anyone else notice how many media bods are showing themselves as Libs, not just in this state but all over the place?
Media bias? Nah; it’s just our imagination …
Chinda
Media people becoming candidates is not a bias problem unless the bias was shown in their work? It is probably easier for Libs to have a bland media presence as they don’t want to raise big picture issues.
The candidates also show the strong presence of Libs in local government. Labor doesn’t do nearly as well at the local govt levels as Libs.
With the small sample and large margin, all this really means is that it is pretty close. Not a bad result for either side.
[On the Liberal side … anyone else notice how many media bods are showing themselves as Libs, not just in this state but all over the place?
Media bias? Nah; it’s just our imagination …]
Leon Bignold anyone?
Today’s news about the Holden jobs did Weatherill no favours. While it certainly wasn’t his fault, it will still be easy to convincingly spin that it is (as well as the fault of the federal Labor government). The Libs will get a free hit out of this. While I haven’t really seen their responses, as long as they don’t seem celebratory, like they did with the Olympic Dam news, it will be a victory for them.
On that note, I would love it if JW said “Ok, it’s time we ween ourselves off of this dying industry before it’s too late and start investing in modern manufacturing industries” – even if said policy shift would not prove popular, it’d be the right thing to do in the long run. Sadly, economic traditionalism will win the day and it will be business as usual, until Holden finally pulls the plug for good.
[The candidates also show the strong presence of Libs in local government. Labor doesn’t do nearly as well at the local govt levels as Libs.]
Libs do better in local governments because:
1) the people who vote for councils are usually older, more conservative voters who care about parochial crap and resist all change to their areas.
2) many of the local governments cover areas which are in seats that don’t really elect Liberals to parliament, so it’s seen as an obvious place to influence the shape of the community and get a name for yourself without having to carpetbag.
A negative side-effect of this of course is when we have too many veterans of local government in the state parliament, they risk dragging the myopic mindset of local governments with them. (Not always the case of course, but it’s a reasonable risk).
I don’t see this poll as surprising at all. New leader gets a modest 2PP bounce. New leader has low dissatisfaction rating. Really just completely normal in the circumstances. Need to wait and see where Marshall settles.
Carey. Local govt should be lively and popular. The fact that it gets dominated by Libs is poor reflection on left politics in SA.
There are quite a few structural issues which don’t favour left – business interests, older voting demographic etc but that partly reflects lack of imagination and commitment from others?
As usual, Carey, Dio & Kevin Bonham keep their heads whilst Labor apologists’ fall off or spin like a top in their never ending search for ALP Nirvana.
As CM & KB said, it is a realistic MOR poll that reflects a modest bounce for Marshall, but hardly the sort of highs that my Liberal and ALP sources expected.
It appears Weatherill’s popularity is keeping them up here. I can see no evidence of much else they’re doing to help that cause.
What Bill has not mentioned are some ALP retirements – Lyn Breuer in Giles (safe ALP) and Robyn Geraghty in Torrens (safish ALP) where the expected replacements are local ALP Councillors.
Oh, am I allowed to say that, seeing that according to PBers here only the Libs have members in Local Government. In reality, the ALP in the metro area would easily outnumber Lib members on Councils. Labor fans here seem to forget their own LG involvement – Mick Atkinson running Charles Sturt Council, 2 ALP staffers on Port Adelaide Council, ALP holds the numbers on Salisbury Council, ex-Mayor Tony Piccolo MP, Deputy Premier John Rau’s (now ex) wife on Charles Sturt Council, Vini Ciccarello exMP ex-Mayor and I could go on and on.
So, making assumptions about the so called Left being weak in Adelaide LG is simply false. As SA doesn’t have compulsory LG voting, it is true that generally older and more middle class home owners are the voters, but they will vote for whom they think will do a good job for them eg two prominent ALP members Tim Looker & Rosemary Clancy are always easily re-elected in very Liberal voting and wealthy Holdfast Bay Council because of their quality as Councillors and not as ALP members. Good luck to them.
Also, the Libs have, strangely, pre-selected the Mayor of Playford for the seat of Newland, which for those of you not familiar with Adelaide, is like in Sydney preselecting the Mayor of Penrith for a seat like Greenway; or in Melbourne the Mayor of Broadmeadows for Doncaster, both in geographic and demographic terms.
Finally, I am dismayed that Carey thinks voters in LG only resist all change etc. Maybe a one party (Labor) state is better after all?
I was going to add that the other reason those of the left aren’t that prominent in local government is that the big issues that the left/Labor often champion are more in the jurisdiction of federal/state government.
[Finally, I am dismayed that Carey thinks voters in LG only resist all change etc. Maybe a one party (Labor) state is better after all?]
Wow, how you inferred that from what I said is absolutely mind-boggling. While it is not usually my position to entertain outrageous straw man arguments on here, I will clarify that I certainly don’t think that there is no place for local governments. They do serve their purpose. I do however think that more exposure should be given to them (instead of just being quiet, voluntary postal ballots that many aren’t even aware of) and possibly further amalgamation – even possibly making a “greater Adelaide” council of all of the metro councils.
As for the assertion that I am for a one party Labor state, that allegation is so stupid, juvenile and unfounded that it doesn’t deserve any serious response.
[ What Bill has not mentioned are some ALP retirements – Lyn Breuer in Giles (safe ALP) and Robyn Geraghty in Torrens (safish ALP) where the expected replacements are local ALP Councillors. ]
Is Giles (Whyalla + neighbouring outback) still safe for Labor? Between what happened to WA Labor’s vote in the goldfields over the last decade or two, and NT Labor in the outback last year, the tories might figure out how to pick that lock one day.
Giles should be OK for Labor.
IT – Agree Labor/left do OK in some Councils but there is a strong overall bias to the right – and that seems to be reflected in the lack of innovation with Local Government Association (reflecting rural council numbers to a large extent perhaps).
[Is Giles (Whyalla + neighbouring outback) still safe for Labor? Between what happened to WA Labor’s vote in the goldfields over the last decade or two, and NT Labor in the outback last year, the tories might figure out how to pick that lock one day.]
Considering the seat has been going 60+% 2PP for Labor since who-knows-when, I wouldn’t highlight it as a seat to flip any time in the immediate future. It’s Labor because its base is Whyalla – a very strongly industrial city, in regards to steel refinement etc. In the long-term, it’s possible the mood could change to Liberal, depending how the Lib party shifts in its values but, until then, I would not hold my breath about it shifting.