BludgerTrack: 56.0-44.0 to Coalition

Three slightly less bad polls for Labor have softened the post-leadership crisis slump in the BludgerTrack poll aggregate. Also featured: preselection news and some minor changes to electoral law.

The latest weekly BludgerTrack update accommodates results from Newspoll, Essential Research and Morgan’s multi-mode poll, with the latter looking like it will be a regularly weekly occurrence in contrast to the unpredictable schedule of the face-to-face series it has replaced. This is a somewhat better batch of polling for Labor than the previous week or two, gaining them 0.5% on two-party preferred and two extra on the seat projection. My latest bias adjustments for the Morgan multi-mode polling, based on comparison of its results with the overall poll trend, are +1.7% for Labor, +0.4% for the Coalition and -1.5% for the Greens, compared with +1.4%, +0.9% and -1.5% as I calculated them a week ago.

In other news, I have a raft of preselection action and a review of some minor electoral law changes:

• A bitterly contested preselection to replace Nicola Roxon in the rock solid Labor seat of Gellibrand in western Melbourne has been won by Telstra executive Tim Watts, running with the backing of Stephen Conroy, for whom he once worked as a staffer. His opponents were Katie Hall, a former adviser to Roxon who ran with her backing; Kimberley Kitching, former Melbourne councillor and current acting general manager of the Health Services Union No. 1 branch; Julia Mason and Daniel McKinnon. The 50% of the preselection vote determined by a local party ballot conducted on Monday saw 126 votes go to Watts, 105 to Kitching, 87 to Hall, 42 to McKinnon and four to Mason. Despite a preference deal between Kitching and Hall, that gave Watts a decisive lead going into Tuesday’s vote of the party’s Public Office Selection Committee, where the “stability pact” between the Shorten-Conroy Right forces and the Socialist Left reportedly assured him of about 70% of the vote. Andrew Crook of Crikey reports that Kitching, who had hoped to prevail with support from Turkish community leaders, was thwarted when the “Suleyman clan” (referring to an influential family in western suburbs politics) defected to Watts in exchange for support for Natalie Suleyman to take the number three position on the upper house ticket for Western Metropolitan at the next state election. A dirt sheet targeting Hall over her sexual history and involvement in the HSU was disseminated in the week before the vote, which has led to Kitching complaining to an ALP tribunal that Roxon had falsely accused her of being involved.

• Steve McMahon, chief executive of the NSW Trainers Association (as in thoroughbred horses) and former mayor of Hurstville, has won Labor preselection for the southern Sydney seat of Barton, to be vacated at the election by Robert McClelland. Much more on that in the next episode of Seat of the Week.

• Barnaby Joyce faces opposition at the April 13 Nationals preselection for New England in the shape of David Gregory, owner of an agricultural software business in Tamworth. Another mooted nominee, National Farmers Federation president Jock Laurie, is instead seeking preselection for the by-election to replace Richard Torbay in his Armidale-based state seat of Northern Tablelands.

• Tony Crook, who won the southern regional WA seat of O’Connor for the Nationals from Liberal veteran Wilson Tuckey in 2010, has announced he will not seek another term. The seat was already looming as a spirited three-cornered contest to match the several which had unfolded at the state election (including in the corresponding local seats of Kalgoorlie and Eyre), with the Liberals running hard and early behind their candidate, Katanning farmer Rick Wilson.

Jason Tin of the Courier-Mail reports Chris Trevor will again be Labor’s candidate for the central Queensland seat of Flynn, having won the seat when it was created in 2007 before joining the Queensland Labor casualty list in 2010. Nicole Hodgson, a teacher, and Leanne Donaldson, a former public servant in child protection, were reportedly set to take on the thankless tasks of Hinkler and Fadden.

A package of electoral law changes made it through parliament last month in the shape of the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Improving Electoral Administration) Act 2013, despite opposition to some measures from the Coalition and Senate cross-benchers Nick Xenophon and John Madigan:

• If a ballot box is unlawfully opened before the authorised time, as occurred at two pre-poll booths in Boothby and Flynn at the 2010 election, the act now requires that the votes be admitted to the count if it is established that “official error” was responsible. The AEC requested the law be clarified after it acted on contestable legal advice in excluding the relevant votes in Boothby and Flynn from the count, which were too few to affect the result. In its original form the bill directed that the affected votes should be excluded, but Bronwyn Bishop successfully advocated for the savings provision when it was referred to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters.

• The Australian Taxation Office has been added to the list of agencies which can provide the Australian Electoral Commission with data relevant to enrolment. As usual with matters that touch on automatic enrolment, this was opposed by the Coalition, Xenophon and Madigan, but supported by all lower house independents and the Greens.

• Pre-polling will in all circumstances begin four days after the close of nominations, giving the AEC two more days to print and disseminate material to the voting centres. The Coalition took the opportunity to move for the pre-poll period to be cut from 19 days before polling day to 12, again with the support of Xenophon and Madigan. The change also eliminates a discrepancy where the date came forward a day if there was no election for the Senate, in which case the election timetable did not have to provide an extra day for lodgement of Senate preference tickets.

• Those casting pre-poll votes will no longer have to sign declaration certificates. A change in the status of pre-poll votes from declaration to ordinary votes was implemented at the 2010 election, allowing them to be counted on election night, but voters still had to sign a certificate. The AEC advised this was unnecessary, but the measure was nonetheless opposed by the Coalition, Xenophon and Madigan.

• The cut-off for receiving postal vote applications has been moved back a day from Thursday to Wednesday, acknowledging the near certainty that voting material posted to those who apply on the Thursday will not be received in time.

• The timetable for conducting electoral redistributions has been amended to allow more time for considering objections raised in public submissions.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,173 comments on “BludgerTrack: 56.0-44.0 to Coalition”

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  1. Interesting Latham piece
    Never thought of it that way but 4 hereditary members

    You can also add Jenkins and even Beazley to the list

    Only Laurie Ferguson and Ludwig still in her camp of the hereditaries

    Or are there others of whom I am not aware. Especially daughters with married names.

    Actually it is a pretty shocking list of hereditaries in the Hawke ministry isn’t it.

    In Qld of the seven members I think two inherited their seats.

  2. Those who think Wayne Swan is some sort of political genius should watch this segment from Lateline last night

    http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2013/s3734383.htm

    This is humiliating and extremely depressing to watch! It will be the norm right up to the election.

    When the Coalition win in September, Abbott and Hockey will frame their first budget as “the ALP have hidden the true extent of how bad things really are in the economy and what’s required is massive cuts to get back to surplus” which will reinforce the view in the electorate for a reasonable period of time that “you can’t trust the ALP with the economy” etc etc etc.

    This is not due to the media or the Coalition or anyone else. The only reason they get away with it is because Swan is politically hopeless!

    If he had any “Labor values” or self awareness or care for his party, he’d have sacrificed himself and gracefully gone to the backbench three weeks ago in order to give the party a fighting chance to regain credibility on the economy before the election, but the simple fact is he’s filled with delusions of grandeur about his political ability and would prefer to fight in order to maintain his power within the party rather than win for the good of his constituents.

  3. People on twitter seem to love what the cartoonists had to say this morning on #fraudband, have had about 40 to 50 retweets so far on them :devil:

    Once again many thanks to BK for his wonderful linking in the mornings

  4. Yes Spur

    It was Swan’s ambition that largely caused the Rudd removal. The two had always been friends/rivals, but swan never got over the elevation of Rudd because he saw himself as PM and Rudd as FM. If not for Sunrise this might have happened.

    So when Swan threatened to challenge Rudd it brought the matter to a head. Gillard had the numbers and Swan got the consolation prize.

    But Swan remains bitter and sees himself as PM (heaven forbid)

  5. [spur212
    Posted Thursday, April 11, 2013 at 10:35 am | Permalink

    Latham hates everyone in the ALP these days except Keating]

    I think you have to add the PM to your “except” list. And the PM has the support of the majority of caucus, something else bemused doesn’t like.

  6. [daretotread
    Posted Thursday, April 11, 2013 at 10:37 am | Permalink

    But Swan remains bitter and sees himself as PM (heaven forbid)]

    The rubbish your read on blog sites.

  7. latham a true labor

    believes in exactly what the pm has done and is doing.

    spurr I think your trolls day are behind you

    no ones listening any more

  8. latham a true labor

    believes in exactly what the pm has done and is doing.

    spurr I think your trolls day are behind you

    no ones listening any more

  9. The Swan haters in action I see. Pity it has very little to do with his role as treasurer and more to do with past leadership events.

  10. I would go so far as saying your not vaccinated

    you cannot attend school or have a place in a in child minding centre

    end of story

  11. frednk

    Nope. He hates Gillard. The article in the AFR attacks people he hates more than he hates Gillard i.e he doesn’t hate equally

  12. To be fair, I’ll throw in the usual caveat of ‘can’t trust the media to report events accurately’ but Hockey’s statements are truly batty.

    Remember, they’re made in the context of addressing a room full of business leaders – people we have to assume know a little bit about what they’re doing, and the Coalition’s core consistuency (traditionally; of course, they may have been replaced by Gina and Rupert…)

    [To the extent that manufacturing industry in Australia is in crisis, Hockey made the controversial suggestion that the high dollar is not the primary cause.]

    So Hockey is saying to these guys, ‘sorry, you’re wrong. I know you THINK the high dollar’s the problem, I know that countless numbers of you are on the record saying that, but I know better than you do.”

    Way to go! Nothing wins hearts and minds like telling the people you’re relying on for donations that they’re ignorant pheasants and you know better than they do why their businesses are struggling…

    [He said businesses did not respond quickly to movements in the dollar – when the dollar was below 50¢, there was no rush to move manufacturing to Australia.]

    But then…

    [There is plenty of mobility for global manufacturers that will move operations to somewhere cheaper, and even China has been a victim of this.]

    So which is it, Joe? Are businesses slow, moribund entities which take a long time to react to circumstances, or are they reacting with gazelle like reflexes?

    [The topic of Australian manufacturing is smoking-hot this week following Holden’s decision to sack 500 people and reduce production despite generous government subsidies.

    It is just one of many companies blaming the high dollar for their woes.]

    Nice of the journo to point to this. But there’s no evidence that Hockey was actually asked whether Holden don’t know what they’re talking about…

    [..he would rather see Australian companies use the strong currency to their advantage to buy offshore assets.]

    Ah! So every complex problem has a simple solution. Unable to compete because of the high dollar? (Which Hockey has just said isn’t the reason why you’re unable to compete, but just pretend he didn’t, because it gets in the way of this argument) Simple! Buy factories overseas!

    So Hockey is arguing that, instead of investing in Australia – for example, upgrading your plant, which (with a high Australia dollar) should be cheaper than usual to do – you should send your money overseas.

    So, in summary: the Shadow Treasurer says – to a room full of businessmen – that they don’t know what they’re talking about when they blame the Aussie dollar for their difficulties; and that they’re too moribund to react to change.

    That must have gone over well. Although, if they’re half as thick as Hockey thinks they are, they wouldn’t have noticed…

    Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/business/hockey-eager-to-cast-off-his-shadow-20130410-2hlr6.html#ixzz2Q6vSxFxL

  13. Mod Lib

    [Yes, I fully accept that. However, with Carr, who every now and then seems to forget that he is Foreign Minister and not just a roving intellectual, the issue is appropriateness. I would have had absolutely no problem with Carr discussing that conversation with Thatcher:]

    Totally agree with you and the parties being held in the street now that she is gone show an appalling lack of respect.

    Whatever you think of Margaret Thatcher now is not the time while her family are grieving the loss of a mother and grandmother.

    There is an old and well known phrase which says “if you can’t say anything nice say nothing at all. Her family are owed that.

  14. triton@100

    Not “they”, bemused. Only Faine brought up acronyms. I was listening carefully to him. I don’t think I’m too bad at detecting irony in spoken language. They were having a serious discussion about Gillard’s China trip. It really wasn’t the time to suddenly inject humour into it except perhaps as a one-off aside, but Faine went on with it after Cassidy disagreed. If I missed the humour then so did Cassidy, since he remained serious in his responses. If there’s a recording, others can make up their own minds.

    Oh dear… I was listening while doing other things, but the overwhelming impression I got was that they were hailing the visit as a success!

    Faine tries to be the funny man often and he was doing it again by raising that amusing bit of trivia.

  15. mysay

    yes, the irony is that you can’t put your dog or cat in a boarding kennel without a full immunisation history, but you can enroll your child in kinder!

    Once again, we show more concern for our animals than our children…

  16. [Anne Platypus ‏@afcoory 5m
    @randlight ‘floppy discs for floppy policy’ could be LNP’s election slogan @vogrady2132]

    Love this tweet from one of my followers so clever :devil:

    BTW is Rummel starting to have doubts about the LNP 😉 his last couple of comments seem to be showing that!!

  17. frednk@109

    spur212
    Posted Thursday, April 11, 2013 at 10:35 am | Permalink

    Latham hates everyone in the ALP these days except Keating


    I think you have to add the PM to your “except” list. And the PM has the support of the majority of caucus, something else bemused doesn’t like.

    Your preoccupation with what I may like or dislike is quite amusing.

  18. [Oh look, Akamai are saying that a single stream of the recently-standardised 4kTV will require 25Mbps.

    So a single video stream gobbles up 100% of the bandwidth of your average peak speed.

    Pity if someone else wants to use the connection at the same time. And what about when 8kTV arrives in a couple of years time?]

    http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/blogs/malcolms-blog/sydney-morning-herald-gets-it-wrong-all-over-the-front-page/

    How does Turnbull get around a comment like this one if it’s factual?

  19. Not this time, bemused.

    Dio
    [Reports James Hird will temporarily step down as Essendon coach today.]
    Absolute madness if he does. He’s a coach not covered by WADA or ASADA codes. Who cares what he takes for his own reasons?

  20. daretotread@110

    Confessions

    Shock

    I AGREE with you on vaccinations. Good post

    I agreed too.

    All I would add is that it is time society came down heavily on those idiot parents and recognised failure to vaccinate as a form of child abuse.

  21. Regarding vaccinations. It is no shock to me that people here who may fight in different corners agree on this.

    Common sense of listening to science and medical experts shows why you are progressives even if you do disagree on the politics of how to go about things at times.

    Just like most agreeing that a carbon price market based mechanism to battle climate change is the way to go.

  22. [108….daretotread]

    This is delusional.

    [102….spur212]

    You are really missing the point. The budget will not balance because company profits are weak and tax collections have not grown. Swan is very wise to point this out. The underlying fiscal position defines the political opportunities and limits for each side.

    As the facts about the budget sink in, the LNP will find it more difficult to get away with arithmetically impossible policies. Every promise of new spending or to cut taxes will be subject to the caveat: where will the money come from when the budget is in structural deficit! How will they be able to afford to abolish the carbon tax? How realistic will it be to increase company taxes to fund paid parental leave? How will the LNP fund its worthless Direct Action spending? How practical is it to spend money on a sham of a BB policy? And if the LNP declare they will cut the budget, what programs will they cut? Medicare? The Commonwealth schools program? How will the LNP run an even tighter fiscal policy without causing a recession?

    Every claim between now and the election made by both Labor and the LNP will be tested against the reality of a tough fiscal outlook.

    Labor can at least claim to have steered the economy through the GFC and to have done so in spite of the mocking opposition of the LNP. Well, the economy is a live issue again. All the other stuff – boats, carbon, super, broadband, parental leave and the social programs – will be subordinate to economic management.

    It is far too early to write off the Government because the LNP do not have an economic policy any more than they have a broadband policy. They are faking it. But they will not be able to fake it for much longer.

  23. [Anne Platypus ‏@afcoory 18m
    @randlight ‘floppy discs for floppy policy’ could be LNP’s election slogan @vogrady2132
    Expand Reply Retweeted Favorite More
    Vince O’Grady ‏@vogrady2132 9m
    @afcoory @randlight Love it. Maybe we could add “floppy disks for sloopy floopy policy’ The LIB NBN SFP]

    More slogans for LNP and the :monkey: and Joe Hockey???

  24. MTBW@136

    Spur

    I agree with you on Swan he is a lightweight and a tedious ambitious bore!

    I have met Swan and he came across as a pleasant, likeable person.

    I just don’t think he has what it takes in the job he is in. He may have the technical skills, but he lacks other key requirements, foremost among them the ability to convincingly present an argument.

  25. bemused
    [I just don’t think he has what it takes in the job he is in. He may have the technical skills, but he lacks other key requirements, foremost among them the ability to convincingly present an argument.]

    This at least I can agree with 100%. He’s a very poor communicator.

  26. mtbw I give you that her family are grieving and negative comments about MThatcher will be hurtful.

    The good and the bad of those years has to be shown and spoken of otherwise we’ll be left lauding Pol Pot, Magarbi, Pinochet – 3 dictators who Thatcher lauded.

    Glenda Jackson’s words were harsh but need to be heard
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDtClJYJBj8&feature=youtu.be

    I can’t imagine that the LNP and their followers will let Gough go lightly. Abbott couldn’t resist digs in his speech when Margaret Whitlam died. I won’t be complaining that they don’t have the right to criticise Gough’s time in office.

    I will probably do the same with Howard. They put themselves in the public eye and shouldn’t be treated as saints when they pass on unless they truly deserve it.

  27. triton@142

    bemused

    I just don’t think he has what it takes in the job he is in. He may have the technical skills, but he lacks other key requirements, foremost among them the ability to convincingly present an argument.


    This at least I can agree with 100%. He’s a very poor communicator.

    I think that is a key ability for a successful politician and there is no substitute for it.

    A good communicator can make up for limitations in other skills by having good staff to brief them and provide advice. But in the end, it can only be them that fronts the media and the public.

    Conroy is another I have doubts about and I do not share the confidence of some that he would beat Turnbull in a debate. He would have facts, logic, technology and everything else on his side, but Turnbull is a better communicator. Sadly.

  28. BH

    I take your point and I have no respect for her politics and the awful things she did. Glenda Jackson’s speech was most impressive – passionate and true – what a commanding voice she has.

    No one is beyond criticism but for me there is a time and place for everything.

    Her family deserve time to grieve their loss and the rest can and will come out later.

  29. Profiting from the misery of others:

    [New Firm Plans to Invest in Lawsuits

    Litigation finance, an obscure corner of Wall Street, is gaining more interest.

    A new firm, Gerchen Keller Capital, has raised $100 million to invest in high-stakes litigation between companies, becoming the latest investment shop to dive into the relatively new sector.

    The prospect of double-digit returns has lured some prominent lawyers to set up litigation finance firms in recent years, bankrolling plaintiffs in exchange for a slice of the potential winnings.]

    http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/new-firm-plans-to-invest-in-lawsuits/?src=rechp

  30. guytaur

    Did you notice this while ‘Christine does the Courtyard’ was on @ Parliament House this morning?

    While she’s being interviewed some long haired, bearded git, dressed in black with a red t-shirt, wanders in to the background, smokes a cigarette and leaves while she continues to go on.
    😀

  31. bemused

    [Conroy is another I have doubts about and I do not share the confidence of some that he would beat Turnbull in a debate. He would have facts, logic, technology and everything else on his side, but Turnbull is a better communicator. Sadly.]

    I agree Conroy has an air of arrogance about him as well he acts like a “know it all”.

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