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. Briefly

    I was not necessarily denying the truth or sense of Swan’s comments. I am sure he is right.

    But I was perhaps a bit sorry about the timing. Labor has had a good five days or so. It might have been nice to bask in positive news for another week.

  3. Hird to stay. Lots of anger about trial by media.

    Essendon strongly supporting ASADA investigation.

    I wish they’d sort this mess out as soon as possible. It’s very bad for the game.

  4. bemused, I’ve met Swan too. I think he is 100% orthodox in his thinking and his instincts. He’s pragmatic and he’s also a Labor warrior. You know, if there is one reason JG has survived, it’s because Swan and a number of other senior ministers have stuck with her. So he is resolute. I also think he is astute, for the most part. He has fumbled a couple of things. But who hasn’t?

    Of course, the other members of Labor’s economic group – Wong and Combet – are excellent.

    I think it is far too soon to dismiss their chances. After all, their opponents have no clue about economic policy. Abbott does not understand economics. Neither Hockey nor Robb have been able to put forward anything resembling an alternative economic strategy. Hockey has actually tried to make a virtue out of promising to do nothing at all on fiscal policy for as long as possible.

    In the end, the choice is not between Swan and a Treasurer from Central Casting. It is a choice between a Government that has a good economic record and an Opposition that clearly has been coasting and has no policies at all.

  6. Briefly @138

    No, I get how good the policy stuff is. That is not the issue!

    The issue is the fact Swan has allowed the ALP to be framed by the Coalition on the economy and he’s hopeless at selling the message and persuading people. He doesn’t know what he’s doing!

  7. I have three questions regarding the NBN for those who are more informed than I:

    First – the political aspect

    If Abbott wins in September as expected but does not control the senate, will the NBN plough on unabated until he manages to get legislation through the senate?

    Second, I was listening to overnight radio last night and some bloke who seemed to know a bit about the technical side of it all (certainly much more than I) was going on about how the NBN will be supersceded within four years by by some kind of technological development that’s happening in Japan (sorry I can’t be more specific). Does this have any credence?

    And finally

    Another bloke was going on about how it doesn’t matter how quickly the fiber delivers the signal to the home because when it gets there it is slowed down anyway as it is processed through the modem. The point he seemed to be making was that the lesser speed of fraudband doesn’t matter because by the time they both get into the house they’re doing about the same speed. Allowing for possible errors in my recollection or in my (lack of) understanding of the subject matter, does that make any kind of sense?

  9. I think Labor will be unrecoverable if Swan reports a 2013 budget deficit much over $15 billion for 2013 and deficits over the forward estimates. Those fiscal promises will be barriers too hard to scale. Not sure how we are going to fund additional programs like NDIS and Gonski without a real re-structure of taxation.

    Labor seems to be afflicted with bad timing when it comes to winning office – 1972, 1983 and 2007.

    I don’t expect an Abbott government will perform any better than the Fraser government is he does become our next PM. Pretty sobering all round.

  13. Darn I can only answer the last question as I am not familiar with the legislation and with that ‘Japanese technology’.

    Devices at home are already capable of 1Gbps speeds (10 times the initial speed Labor is proposing). If people don’t have routers/modems/switches that are capable of those speeds they were sold a lemon by retailers (unless they have bought those a while ago). So the third point, the guy was talking nonsense in my opinion.

    About the NBN being superseded in 4 years I think that is load of crap as well. The initial speed that NBN offers is 100Mbps. The fibre itself is capable of a lot more than that, so I don’t see it becoming obsolete any time soon. The only thing that will need to be done to the NBN when it reaches its capacity is to upgrade the equipment that ‘shoots’ the bits down the fibre, in turn making it a lot cheaper to maintain and upgrade than the fraudband offered by LIBs. Anyway that is my understanding of it.

  14. [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.]

    Isn’t Swan in the process of putting through legislation that will set up a new independent body that will prevent these kind of lies – one that will examine the economic claims of both the government and the opposition and report within thirty days after the election how viable they are. If so, it might not be so easy for the liars of the liberal party to find the mythical black hole.

  15. “@ABCtech: Questions about how long copper network will work for. Turnbull says no one knows. Telstra said 15yrs, 9yrs ago.”

  16. Darn@157

    I have three questions regarding the NBN for those who are more informed than I:

    First – the political aspect

    If Abbott wins in September as expected but does not control the senate, will the NBN plough on unabated until he manages to get legislation through the senate?

    NBN has contracts let with a number of construction companies who are doing the actual work.

    I would expect to see those contracts completed but am not sure just how much of the roll-out that will complete. I expect it will be quite a lot.

    Will Abbott move to rip up those contracts?


    Second, I was listening to overnight radio last night and some bloke who seemed to know a bit about the technical side of it all (certainly much more than I) was going on about how the NBN will be supersceded within four years by by some kind of technological development that’s happening in Japan (sorry I can’t be more specific). Does this have any credence?

    Highly unlikely.
    That is not to say that technology will stop progressing and improvements made in fibre optic technology and the electronic equipment for routing traffic etc.

    Forget about anything wireless based. That is not even science fiction, it is science fantasy.


    And finally

    Another bloke was going on about how it doesn’t matter how quickly the fiber delivers the signal to the home because when it gets there it is slowed down anyway as it is processed through the modem. The point he seemed to be making was that the lesser speed of fraudband doesn’t matter because by the time they both get into the house they’re doing about the same speed. Allowing for possible errors in my recollection or in my (lack of) understanding of the subject matter, does that make any kind of sense?

    Yeah sure!

    If you want to stick with running an old 10Mb/s router at home then that is a self imposed limit.

    My current wireless router runs at 100Mb/s for cable connections and Wireless g is 54Mb/s so even that is fine and it is at least 5 years old. New ones are better, faster and cheaper.

    In short, a mix of bs and scaremongering.

  17. [159
    davidwh

    I think Labor will be unrecoverable if Swan reports a 2013 budget deficit much over $15 billion for 2013 and deficits over the forward estimates. Those fiscal promises will be barriers too hard to scale. Not sure how we are going to fund additional programs like NDIS and Gonski without a real re-structure of taxation.

    Labor seems to be afflicted with bad timing when it comes to winning office – 1972, 1983 and 2007.

    I don’t expect an Abbott government will perform any better than the Fraser government is he does become our next PM. Pretty sobering all round.]

    There is no chance of a deficit of $15 billion. The imbalance in the external accounts and the exchange rate mean it is not possible to achieve full employment and a balanced budget at the same time, or anything close to it.

    The structural imbalance in the external sector is still above 5% of GDP, of which about half is showing up in the public sector accounts. So the fiscal deficit is certainly between 2%and 3% of GDP – that is, between $30 and $45 billion. Labor are going to run deficits in the name of stability. At the same time they will let everyone know that LNP promises to balance the budget are not only unachievable, but that if they were attempted they will certainly cause a serious recession.

    Every indebted home-buyer should be very alarmed by the LNP’s plans. Every household with kids in fee-paying schools, every consumer with credit card debt, everybody paying off their car or their holiday, and everyone with a Super account should beware. The LNP will cause general havoc and might ruin your finances.

    This is the reality.

    On the other hand, Labor can promise more orthodox management, gradual change, patience while external income grows, continued investment in infrastructure, economic stability and financial security for households.

    If I were a voter, even if I were now inclined to vote LNP, I would think very very hard about voting for them. I might be voting for unemployment and dispossession.

  19. briefly

    [If I were a voter, even if I were now inclined to vote LNP, I would think very very hard about voting for them. I might be voting for unemployment and dispossession.]

    This statement should form part of the ALP mantra

  21. Briefly

    Liberal voters aren’t in the mode of thinking about their party or how dangerous they are to their personal interests. All their eyes are focused on is Labor with hatred and contempt.

  23. Oh NO, not High Speed Rail for Australia. Tony Abbott is scared shit of anything High Speed, eg: #NBN, he wants the steam driven locomotive

  26. Breaking: Tony Abbott says that a Coalition government will build a high-speed stage coach post-road between Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Passengers will be able to travel from Melbourne to Sydney in only three days, he said. “This will be good for innkeepers and stables in National Party electorates,” he said.

  27. spur 212….I think it is a mistake to characterise “Liberal voters” in monolithic terms. They are voters like any others and the data shows they are already worried about their economic circumstances. They are tuned into this issue. Labor has to start talking to the fears of people who are experiencing financial stress.

    This is not hard to do. Abbott has been trading on fear for three years. Labor can do it as well and do it more effectively. The message lies in the choice – stability and economic adjustment in an uncertain world…or disruption, hardship and grief.

    For sure, if the LNP try to balance the budget, something will have to go – Medicare perhaps? And the result will be a recession – something that many people have never experienced. Labor can win on this.

  31. Darn

    Just adding to bemused and slav.

    The limit we’re now hitting with copper is in the cable, not the endpoints. The limit for fibre is currently in the endpoints, but those are already well beyond copper’s speed and not even close to the fibre’s own limits. So, there’s room for upgrade with the current fibre even if new technology comes out (which it will, there are better fibre cables under development).

    In any case, whatever arguments are made now about either fibre obsolescence or unnecessary capacity (oddly, the Coalition sees nothing wrong with running both arguments) those same arguments will be made w.r.t. whatever new technology comes out in the future.

  35. Briefly

    We aren’t dealing with rationality here. What these people think is that the Liberals are responsible for the good economic conditions due to the surpluses they built up during the Howard government and Labor are causing them pain and sending the country into debt and deficit.

    They don’t care about the policy argument. They’ve made up their minds!

    The ALP have been trying fear for the last two years. Most are hopeless at it! “Higher interest rates under the Liberal Party” doesn’t have the same authoritative ring to it that “Labor debt and deficit” has with most people.

  36. briefly @ 167

    There is no chance of a deficit of $15 billion

    Interesting post. 33 days to budget. We’ll see.

    Voter’s perceptions are everything. Here’s a quiz. Which politicians made these statements?

    1) “The Budget is coming back to surplus, no ifs no buts it will happen”?

    2) “Politician:
    Well we’re getting back into surplus in three years, Kochie.
    KOCH:
    Ok. Come hell or high water?
    Politician
    Come hell or high water”?

    3.) “You can’t run this country if you can’t manage its budget, Mr. Abbott has never shown the capability to manage its budget yet?”

    4.)“We see the surplus in 12-13 as being absolutely fundamental?”

    5.) “The alternative — meandering back to surplus — would compound the pressures in our economy and push up the cost of living for pensioners and working people?”

    6.)“We’ve got our colors nailed to the mast. That’s what we’re doing. We’re producing a surplus in 2012-13. We’re determined to do that and that’s what we’re going to do?”

    7.)“We saved jobs, stayed out of recession and got back to surplus?”

    8.) “Politician:
    The Budget will be back in the black, back in surplus, in 2012-13…
    OAKES:
    Guaranteed?
    Politician:
    Yes, the Budget is coming back to surplus Laurie in 2012-13 as promised”?

  37. Darn@157

    I have three questions regarding the NBN for those who are more informed than I:

    First – the political aspect

    If Abbott wins in September as expected but does not control the senate, will the NBN plough on unabated until he manages to get legislation through the senate?

    Second, I was listening to overnight radio last night and some bloke who seemed to know a bit about the technical side of it all (certainly much more than I) was going on about how the NBN will be supersceded within four years by by some kind of technological development that’s happening in Japan (sorry I can’t be more specific). Does this have any credence?

    And finally

    Another bloke was going on about how it doesn’t matter how quickly the fiber delivers the signal to the home because when it gets there it is slowed down anyway as it is processed through the modem. The point he seemed to be making was that the lesser speed of fraudband doesn’t matter because by the time they both get into the house they’re doing about the same speed. Allowing for possible errors in my recollection or in my (lack of) understanding of the subject matter, does that make any kind of sense?

    I think that they will use their announced “reshuffle” of the board and CEO positions to nobble NBNCo, in advance of trying to get any Senate approval. NBN rollout will slow down drastically as soon as they get “their” people in positions of authority inside it.

    All i have heard about new research lately is the advances that are pointing towards VAST increases in our ability to pipe data over a fibre. Currently NBN is 100Mbps, going to 1Gbps in a couple of years and with a clear upgrade path on proven tech to 10Gbps on fibre. Add in the new research and 10Gbps will seem ridiculous slow. 🙂

    Contention means that anything wireless based is most likely to NEVER be faster or be able to handle the volume of data that fibre can, much less overtake it, as a broad scale delivery medium out side of an RF shielded lab. Its essential complementary tech to a good fibre network though.

    As to your last point? If you home modem/router has gigabit ethernet ports there is no technical basis for his statement. It will deliver data to and from the router/modem at up to 1Gbps. A lot of routers at the moment only have 100mbps ports, which is fine for NBN as its being rolled out, and you would have no need to upgrade until you want 1Gbps. Unless you want you home media storage to stream faster like me. 🙂

  38. phes

    that about the power to stop
    the nbn

    can you find a link that would suit a tweet
    please

    the liberal voters have silly notions in their heads that

    abbott is just joking

    please find a way to get this on twitter

  39. In (part) answer to Darn’s questions…

    Q2… there is and cannot be anything faster than the speed of light (unless Einstein was wrong).

    Theoretical speeds of the optical fibre NBN are thousands of times higher than 100mbps.

    The 100mbps is reflective of the current speed of modems. I have a 150mbps Wi-Fi modem. My last one was 54mbps. My next one (when the NBN comes through) will probably need to be 500mbps.

    There’s research going on all the time. On a lab bench you can get anything to work fast. Then you have to make it capable of being mass-produced and suitable for mass usage.

    Many of these “breakthroughs” are single channel only, not suitable for ubiquitous use, and they may NEVER be suitable.

    Q3… Of course as soon as an optical signal has to be switched through an electronic circuit the signal processing will slow down.

    But electrical switching (modems and the like) are easily capable of working up to 1 gigabit per second. They remain expensive at these speeds because there is little (at the moment) call for them.

    Once high sp[eeds, such as those offered by the pure NBN are available, the modems will increase in speed and decrease in cost.

    My 150mbps modem was GIVEN to me by Telstra. Five years ago it would have cost hundreds of dollars.

    There is a big difference between connecting a signal to a passive, corroded copper cable a mile away from your premises, that may have been laid in the 60s or 70s (or earlier in many cases) and connecting to a modem, designed and manufactured recently, inside your premises, a few metres away from your PC.

    Whoever it was who said in-premises technology would slow the NBN down was bullshitting.

  41. Psephos@179

    To answer an earlier question, an Abbott government would have the power to direct NBN Co to stop the NBN rollout, without legislation.

    But what of the contracts already signed with construction companies?

  42. DisplayName@181

    Darn

    Just adding to bemused and slav.

    The limit we’re now hitting with copper is in the cable, not the endpoints. The limit for fibre is currently in the endpoints, but those are already well beyond copper’s speed and not even close to the fibre’s own limits. So, there’s room for upgrade with the current fibre even if new technology comes out (which it will, there are better fibre cables under development).

    In any case, whatever arguments are made now about either fibre obsolescence or unnecessary capacity (oddly, the Coalition sees nothing wrong with running both arguments) those same arguments will be made w.r.t. whatever new technology comes out in the future.

    Points well put.

  43. spur212@185

    Briefly

    We aren’t dealing with rationality here. What these people think is that the Liberals are responsible for the good economic conditions due to the surpluses they built up during the Howard government and Labor are causing them pain and sending the country into debt and deficit.

    They don’t care about the policy argument. They’ve made up their minds!

    The ALP have been trying fear for the last two years. Most are hopeless at it! “Higher interest rates under the Liberal Party” doesn’t have the same authoritative ring to it that “Labor debt and deficit” has with most people.

    And a lot of this has been fed by making unwise ‘promises’ such as achieving a surplus next year, repeating it endlessly, and then having to retract it.

    Over promising and under-delivering is a formula for blowing away your credibility.

  44. Does anyone have an idea as to how far in advance contracts for the NBN are signed.We are due for work to commence in Dec 2014.
    Someone alluded to the fact a few days ago that Labor should concentrate a bit more on loyal Labor areas. Where were the replies from the All You Have to Do is Produce Good Policy Crowd that responded when I suggested a few years ago that the Govt. might look at this. I’m happy to report that the beach side suburb that adjoins a leafy upper class area with their 4 million dollar houses not all that far from me get theirs from October this year. You’d be flat out finding a Labor voter in the whole area. They’ll get the NBN and then happily vote for the rest of us to miss out.

  45. Dio
    [I wish they’d sort this mess out as soon as possible. It’s very bad for the game.]

    I wish Caroline Wilson would stop telling people to resign.

  50. Excellent work of Albo and team. Also impressed with dusability transport review right next to this high profile High Speed Train report

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