Highlights of day three

A happy ending for Labor in its candidate crisis in Dobell, but the betting markets continue to move against them.

With 30 days to go:

• Labor has resolved its preselection difficulty in Dobell by recruiting Emma McBride, a former Wyong councillor and head of pharmacy at Wyong Hospital. McBride is the daughter of Grant McBride, who held the local state electorate of The Entrance from 1992 to 2011. She had initially been a candidate for the original preselection process which had lately hit a brick wall with the non-ratification of Trevor Drake’s endorsement, but announced her withdrawal in May. It evidently took some strong persuasion by party administration to get her back on board.

• Centrebet has hiked the payout on a Labor victory from $4 to $4.80, with the Coalition in from $1.25 to $1.18, and there is now $4.80 to be had on a Labor win from Betfair against $1.26 for the Coalition. Sportsbet and Tom Waterhouse continue to offer $4 on Labor. Sportsbet has lengthened Labor’s odds in Petrie, Moreton and Parramatta but shortened them in Dobell, presumably on the back of McBride’s endorsement. Labor is now paying $2.50 in Dobell and the Coalition $1.50, compared with $3.50 and $1.25 at the start of the week.

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.

1,172 comments on “Highlights of day three”

Comments Page 15 of 24
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  2. I still think Rudd is wrong to resist the NPC debate. He will get more mileage out of an actual debate than out of a dispute over debates.

  8. Gee the Abbott’s Boosting Corporation are having a good day – according to the news it seems the steady employment figures are a disaster and show that the economy is in crisis.

    On The World Today they reckon Beatty is a media tart has-been and have the vox pop to back that up.

    Abbott however has all the answers and his jobs plan is fantastic – lets all listen top him at length and then applaud. Lexie is positively breathless with enthusiasm and very well versed on all his ‘policies’.

    Rudd though, she says, is such a bore criticising her hero Murdoch for wanting to get rid of the NBN, after all her mate Tony says its rubbish.

    Then we have Felicity with the Lib candidate at Bass, a lovely little puff piece. Abbott, Abbott, Abbott, how wonderful young love is. The Labor man however, whoever the fuck he is, is getting his posters defaced (well he would wouldn’t he). Tough titties. Loss of jobs is all his fault after all. Quick lets get back to a Liberal supporter to tell us how to solve all problems.

    Oh now we’ll trash the NBN is case anyone thinks Labor has some good policies – asbestos problems, millions of dollars, blah blah blah. Vote for the Libs and Telstra will make even more money (didn’t quite follow that reasoning but gee the bloke on the ABC must be right).

    Sabra now at the Press conference with Beatty and Rudd – oh no, Beatty’s wife has her arms firmly folded! Quelle horreure.

    Next, surprise surprise, PINK BATTS – complaints that too many people got insulated and no customers left. It was all about Jobs jobs jobs evidently – how dare they.

    Oh no, now Ausaid workers are all having nervous breakdowns because funding has been withdrawn – give me the ballot paper now and let me vote for Tony the saviour………that Rudd, what a bastard –

  12. http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/poll-roundup-and-seat-betting-watch.html

    Poll roundup for this week updated: betting moves (esp in Forde), SMH attack on election betting, Age attack on ReachTEL, seat polls.

    lefty e@658

    Poss sez:

    If we plug those numbers into Antony Greens Election Calculator, we get the ALP currently sitting on 77 seats, the Coalition 71 and 2 Independents (Katter and Wilkie). The Tasmania, ACT and NT results all come from small samples in either the ReachTEL or Morgan SMS results – so they’re a bit iffy, but you get the general picture.

    My election simulation produces a similar result 76 seats to the ALP vs. 72 to the Coalition, with 2 Independents.


    SO COME ON! THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION FOR DEFEATISM.

    *Howard Dean style insane woot sound*

    That article is five weeks out of date, and that particular use of Antony’s calculator as a model was incorrect because Labor had far greater exposure to chance losses in very close seats.

    (Not recommending defeatism, just realism that Labor’s current polling position is struggling.)

  16. [some fairfax journos of an alp bent went for PMJG as they thought labor and Australia would be better off if she was replaced and they made that clear.]

    Including publishing as fact reports they knew to be untrue.

  17. Re the current woes of Federal and State public services. There are many causes to this IMO and both sides of politics have contributed to the situation. Indeed, I would think that Labor Governments have been marginally the worst offenders: right back to the Whitlam era, Labor leaders have often tended to mistrust any senior public servants whom they have not personally appointed (and ideally, have come up through the party as ministerial advisers or the like).

    The process began in the 1980s.

    First was the destruction of the old “public service board model”, in which decisions to promote people and to create new jobs and appoint people to them had been subject to a considerable amount of independent scrutiny. I think there are vestiges of this approach surviving in some of the smaller states, but it is long gone from the larger states and the Federal Government.

    Next was the removal of the concept of permanent heads/directors-general.

    Then the removal of permanency for senior management cadres (I think this started first in NSW under Greiner and then spread everywhere else).

    Then the removal of the concept of “office-holding” which gave Secretaries/Directors-General the ability to shift people from one job to another at will: ok in theory, but potentially dangerous to impartiality when you consider that some of those former “office holders” were supposed to be exercising independent decision-making powers under acts of parliament free of interference from above.

    There has also been a growing tendency at State level (NSW being an egregious example) for decisions that would be most appropriately be made by public servants being pulled up into ministers office: hands up who thinks its a good idea for elected ministers to be able singlehandedly to make decisions on the issuing of mining licences or planning permits?

    All of these changes were typically trumpeted in terms of making public services more efficient/businesslike/better able to deal with poor performers. Wonderful, but it has also removed almost all of the legislative protections that enabled public servants to “speak truth to power” without fear of punishment.

    Sure, in the “bad old days”, department heads and senior public servants could be obstructive and obstreperously arrogant. But now they seem to me increasingly to act as if they are intimidated and fearful for their jobs. For instance, take the Obeid-Macdonald case: for me, one really interesting question is what the senior public servants were doing while all this bad stuff was going down. There are many other instances of this sort of stuff.

    When Howard came to power in 1996, he intimidated the hell out of the public service by taking the unprecedented move of sacking half a dozen of the leading departmental secretaries, using the powers that the same secretaries had naively offered up to the politicians under Hawke-Keating: in exchange, as I recall it, for a relatively measly pay rise!! They were perhaps deserving victims of group think. The chain of thinking went something like: “Now I don’t have permanency, I’m vulnerable to being sacked, but surely that would only happen if I underperform. And I’m absolutely marvellous, so that’s not going to happen.” And these were our best and brightest…..

    Rudd, to his credit, didn’t create such a bloodbath when he came to power in 2007. I suspect there is a bit of intimidation behind the Coalition’s current plan to axe 12,000 jobs, but Abbott has also long made it clear that he believes that the main function of the Federal public service should be to advise Ministers and implement regulations. He thinks that all service delivery should be given to locally-based NGOs or, failing that, to larger quangos run by fiduciary boards.

    Abbott personally doesn’t believe in state governments (he’s on the record about this), but he’s out of tune with his party, so he’s currently talking about transferring bureaucratic activities to the states. But, ideally, he’d like institutions like schools and hospitals to be funded by a combination of Federal and private funds, and to be managed by boards of local dignitaries, godbothering busybodies and other people who some might describe as “community figures”.

    Personally, I would support him on this in terms of the education system (nothing could be worse than the current leviathan systems administered by state education departments), but not health or other community service areas where the goal of maximising outputs for scare resources needs management over large geographic areas, or else you end up with silly outcomes like the Federal Government intervening to save the Mersey hospital outside of Devonport.

  18. my say
    Posted Thursday, August 8, 2013 at 2:54 pm | PERMALINK
    did u all hear about the ridiculous offer from abbott for tas

    ——————

    The people of tasmania should not let one liberal party member win a seat :
    )

  25. Quentin Dempster ‏@QuentinDempster 23h

    Forget Foxtel/NBN! Rupert’s agenda is to blow up ABC under cover of deficit reduction 2014. ABC a threat to News/Fairfax pay wall strategy
    ===========================================================
    I suppose the pm has heard about this

  26. When you see Beattie and Rudd (Pete and dud?) looking so at ease, what does that say about Abbott and Hockey (dud and dud) at their pressers!

  27. I like that Labor is doing good and LNP is floundering.

    If things do not change drastically I think we can say Labor has won the first three days of campaigning.

  28. [That article is five weeks out of date, and that particular use of Antony’s calculator as a model was incorrect because Labor had far greater exposure to chance losses in very close seats. ]

    Doh! One of my collegaues was talking it up as if it had been published today. Quite so.

    Didnt check, mea culpa.

    Still: NO DEFEATISMS! Beattie will help make this true again!

  29. Brilliant answer from Beatie in response to the gotcha quiz question on whether he could name the schools in the electorate. Reeled them off breezily. Thought he was very good indeed.

  30. 643
    Player One
    [Some of us have been saying this for years.]

    Including me.

    [It’s an absolute disgrace that the ABC has been complicit for so long in its own potential destruction.]

    That’s board stacking for you. Big thanks to Howard for that. One of the more pernicious – and deliberate – legacies he left us.

    Best part is that the ABC seem to think that if they don’t give Abbott too much grief then he will go easy on them if elected. When the truth is that they are farked either way (if he wins), so they might as well go down fighting honourably.

  32. The big benefit of the parachuting of Beattie into the equation is the reconnection of the disconnected voter.

    This is a big circuit breaker that will produce furrowed brows to foreheads of the LNP chiefs.

  35. [Quentin Dempster ‏@QuentinDempster 23h

    Forget Foxtel/NBN! Rupert’s agenda is to blow up ABC under cover of deficit reduction 2014. ABC a threat to News/Fairfax pay wall strategy]

    Then Julie Bishop will declare him insane like she did Kevin Rudd.

  36. psephos@690

    I agree that the Liberals failing to win a Senate seat in Canberra is unlikely, although 1998 was pretty close.

    It’s theoretically possible, of course, but – despite how Labor a town it is – there seems to be a rusted-on Liberal vote in Canberra that is just large enough to deliver one Senate seat.

    However, the thing that is slightly different this time is that the Liberal candidate – Zed Seselja – is from the hard right rather than the moderate background of previous senators like Margaret Reid and Gary Humphries. Also, given the Liberals’ announced policies re public service cuts, almost any Canberran – not just public servants, but any business owner or even home owner – who votes Liberal is more or less a turkey voting for Thanksgiving. In 1996, when Howard cut the public service by just a handful of percentage points, house prices in Canberra fell by around 25 per cent or more. If Abbott wins, the price drop will surely be even bigger this time around. One of the first things you would expect to see drop off is the recruitment of interstate graduates, which is the engine which has driven the vast expansion of multi-storey apartment buildings in Canberra across the past decade or so.

    So one never knows. But, just as many Labor voters (including many on here) are prepared to vote ALP against their own personal economic interests, we must allow that there is an equivalent Liberal-voting group: especially, it would seem, in the ACT.

  37. havent read but I believe he offered employees a sum of money to employ people who have been out of work for 6 months

    whoooppddo

    not one single new job

  38. Rudd was asked whether he believed Tony Abbott when he said he hadn’t spoken to Murdoch about the NBN.

    Answered wtte “The Fruadband launch was done at Fox studios. That’s all you need to know.”

  41. [Rudd should go the NPC, yes.]

    The alternative debate format, which Rudd (but not Abbott) has accepted, is being promoted by Channel7 for Sunday night in conjunction with Facebook. It fits into the ‘Obama campaign’ people-power strategy.

  43. [Answered wtte “The Fruadband launch was done at Fox studios. That’s all you need to know.”]

    Did he actually use the word ‘Fraudband’? I hope so. 🙂

  44. Dr Fumbles McStupid

    Posted Thursday, August 8, 2013 at 2:42 pm | Permalink

    @AussieAchmed

    Your analogy is good whats going on her at the moment is more, started with a “circle”, new boss didn’t like the circle so his plan was to have a “something else”. However, new boss cannot actually define “something else” other than it “is not a circle”.

    For added bonus points, the “circle” was fundamentally good model but needed minor modifications. By going for “something else” any of the good attributes of the “circle” are now automatically rejected as they are associated with the old boss.
    —————————————————

    My unwillingness to stay “below the radar” and not be afraid to voice my opinion when these changes are proposed because I see that so much they propose has been tried previously and failed and I question what they will do differently to make it succeed has resulted in me losing my job after 32 years.

  46. citizen, yes, but Abbott will not do it. At this stage Abbott thinks he holds the aces, so he can choose the debate location and format. Rudd can’t win this.

  47. [many Labor voters (including many on here) are prepared to vote ALP against their own personal economic interests]

    I certainly do. Every time interest rates go down, I lose money. I would vote for anyone who promised to put interest rates up, but no-one ever does. 🙁

  49. View media

    Emma Griffiths ‏@EJGriffiths 1h
    Abbott says Tas economic plan will be announced next week, but gives part 1 today: $250 per f/n for employers who hire long term unemployed

    =========================================================
    what an insult

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