BludgerTrack: 53.0-47.0 to Labor

Not much doing in the world of federal polling this week, but there’s quite a bit to report on the preselection front.

It’s been as quiet a week as they come so far as federal polling is concerned, with only the reliable weekly Essential Research to keep us amused. Newspoll and Roy Morgan were both in an off week in their fortnightly cycles, and neither Galaxy nor ReachTEL stepped forward to fill the gap, presumably because their clients at News Corporation and the Seven Network blew their budget on double-up polls during the Liberal leadership excitement in early February. Since the Essential Research result landed well on trend, the BludgerTrack poll aggregate has recorded only the most negligible of changes on voting intention, with the marginal exception of a 0.3% lift for the Greens. Labor also makes a gain on the seat projection, having tipped over the line for a seventh seat in Western Australia (do keep in mind though that the electoral furniture there will shortly be rearranged by the redistribution to accommodate the state’s newly acquired entitlement to sixteenth seat).

If an absence of polling is a problem for you, you can at least enjoy yesterday’s semi-regular state voting intention results from Roy Morgan, based on SMS polling of samples ranging from 432 in Tasmania to 1287 in New South Wales. These have Labor leading 56-44 in Victoria, 50.5-49.5 in Western Australia, 53-47 in South Australia and 55.5-44.5 in Tasmania (not that two-party preferred means anything under Hare-Clark). However, the recently defeated Liberal National Party is credited with an improbable 51-49 lead in Queensland. New South Wales is not included in the mix as the result was published a day before the rest, which you can read all about on my latest state election thread.

In other news, federal preselection action is beginning to warm up, spurred in part by the possibility that Liberal leadership turmoil might cause the election to be held well ahead of schedule. Troy Bramston of The Australian reports that Labor “has ordered its state and territory branches to urgently preselect parliamentary candidates by the end of June”, with exemptions for New South Wales and Western Australia owing to their looming redistributions (the latter process is presently at the stage of receiving public suggestions, which may be submitted by April 10). Some notable happenings on that count:

• Labor has conducted local ballots for preselections in the three Victorian seats it lost to the Liberals in 2013. Darren Cheeseman appears to have failed in his bid for another crack at Corangamite, where the ballot was won by Libby Coker, a Surf Coast councillor and former mayor who ran in Polwarth at the November state election. Also in the field was Tony White, an economic development manager at Colac Otway Shire and former adviser to various ministers and premiers in Bracks-Brumby ogvernment. In La Trobe, former Casey councillor Simon Curtis outpaced the rather higher profile Damien Kingsbury, the director of La Trobe University’s Centre for Citizenship, Development and Human Rights. The vote in Deakin was won by Tony Clarke, of whom I can’t tell you much. It now remains for the state party’s public office selection committee to determine its 50% share of the vote total, but the talk seems to be that Coker in particular is home and hosed.

• Joe Ludwig, who has held a Queensland Senate seat for Labor since 1999, has announced he will not seek another term at the next election. He is set to be succeeded by Anthony Chisholm, the party’s state secretary from 2008 until 2014, when the Left’s unprecedented success in scoring majority control at the party’s state conference caused the position to pass to Evan Moorhead. Chisholm was given the short-term and now-expired role as director of the state election campaign, and also has Left faction support to fill Ludwig’s position, which remains in the hands of the AWU/Labor Forum faction. A potential rival contender was Chisholm’s predecessor as state secretary, Cameron Milner, but AWU support consolidated behind Chisholm in part because he had the backing of Wayne Swan, which reportedly led to a falling out between Swan and Milner. For more on both Swan and Milner, see further below.

• There is also a widely held expectation that Ludwig will shortly be joined in the departure lounge by the Left faction’s Jan McLucas, the other Queensland Labor Senator due to face the voters at the next half-Senate election. The favourite to replace her is Murray Watt, a Bligh government minister who lost his seat of Everton in the 2012 landslide, and more recently a lawyer with Maurice Blackburn. However, Michael McKenna of The Australian reports this could raise affirmative action issues, with Townsville mayor Jenny Hill mooted as an alternative contender if so. Another aspirant mentioned in McKenna’s report is Michael Ravbar, state secretary of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union.

Michael McKenna of The Australian reports that Wayne Swan and Bernie Ripoll are “being stalked as targets of possible preselection challenges”. In Swan’s inner northern Brisbane seat of Lilley, the aforementioned Cameron Milner is said to be “considering” a challenge to the former Treasurer. On the western side of town in Oxley, Brisbane City Council opposition leader Milton Dick is “preparing to roll Mr Ripoll”, and has “cross-factional support” to do so.

The Australian reports Sophie Mirabella is keen to run again in Indi, which she famously lost in 2013 to independent Cathy McGowan. However, the report says the party is “deeply pessimistic about the chance of regaining the seat, and the contest is complicated by the Nationals being able to contest it”.

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.

3,093 comments on “BludgerTrack: 53.0-47.0 to Labor”

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  1. The $1.5 billion that Abbott wants to sink into the E-W link would have saved all the cuts to free legal and other welfare services that are causing immense problems to women in rural communities.

  2. Victoria

    In Opposition, Labor announced that it would dump the project late, and without knowing the legal consequences. The Coalition government for its part pressed on with the project in the knowledge that its planning approval process was being challenged, and locked contracts in after Labor’s warning had been issued.

    Labor’s threat, the contract and a side letter that the Government signed that attempts to insulate the contract from a successful legal challenge have combined to create a legal morass.

    [The moral position looks clearer however following the revelation that the East West Connect consortium helped draft the side-letter that buttressed its contract to construct the tollway. It becomes clearer still if it is confirmed that the first big drawdown of funding for the project could actually have occurred after the State election.]

    http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/it-should-not-cost-12-billion-to-clean-this-mess-up-20150318-1m2env.html

  3. lizzie

    The whole thing stinks to high heaven. The Liberals are still trying to defend it. The side letter alone damns them

  4. PVO on twitter

    [The PM now saying he’s pretty relaxed about debt to GDP going up to 60 per cent – because it’s worse in Greece – blows me away…]

  5. Steve777

    No wonder Treasury has been quick to disown it. Their reputations are on the line. This is the same deception Hockey has used throughout his stint at Treasurer. “I didn’t write it, miss. It was the boy beside me.”

  6. “The point is that the currency-issuing government can always purchase anything that is for sale in the currency that it issues. There is never a question about that capacity.

    So a fiscal surplus or deficit today provides no less or more scope for public spending tomorrow. That capacity is infinite financially and constrained by the real goods and services that are for sale in that currency.”

    Professor Bill Mitchell

    http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=30456

  7. Guytar i was reading the recent history of the ‘independent speaker’ in the UK. I still think there are a number of factors that make it easier there than here, but having said that it doesn’t appear to be working very well there either.

    So having followed your some what arrogant and patronising suggestion to review how it actually worked I now have revised my position on how it works there to (sorta of a bit, but not really).

    Really really simple questions for you:

    1. What does the government of the day get from having a truly independent speaker?

    2. Given 1, why would a following government follow suit in the event that a government did try to move our model more towards the UK model.

    Having said that we well may find speakers who don’t sit in caucus in the future. If I were elected speaker my respect for the office would mean regardless of the wishes or expectations of the PM I would not sit in caucus.

    On the other hand I think we are unlikely to see too many speakers as overtly playing for the government and as stupid as the current one.

  8. WWP

    You said that the British could not be done here. I said have a look at the British one and you would see that yes it could.

    As to why it would advantage Labor for doing it. Simple. Labor can cope well with an independent Speaker. They look good as well. Look at the Slipper period.

    Labor do not need to have a Speaker like Bishop.

  9. WWP and guytaur

    Remember how many times Bronnie was refused her “points of order” under Slipper and others? She was either trying it on, or was saving up her anger to fight back when she attained her rightful position (sic) under Tony.

    The way QT is conducted says a lot about the Abbott influence.

  10. The UK House of Commons has 650 members. The party of Government can normally afford to give up a vote for an independent Speaker. Also, the tradition is long-established, whereas here the Speaksership seems to to have always been just another one of the spoils of office. The nearest we’ve come to an independent Speaker in recent years is Peter Slipper.

  11. I believe the DD threat is aimed at the crossbenchers. Labor and the Greens will be more than thrilled at the prospect of a DD.

    Not that the crossbenchers are going to buy it.

  12. [The Australian government has been urged to place US-style regulations on coal-fired power plants to ensure they shut down, as a new analysis highlights the vast scale of emissions pumped out by the largest carbon dioxide polluters in the country.

    Just 10 companies are responsible for a third of Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) study.

    “We have got to close down the worst polluting plants in Australia,” said Geoff Cousins, ACF’s president. “At the moment the government is offering no incentives for companies to get off fossil fuels.”

    Cousins said he would welcome the kind of direct regulations placed by Barack Obama’s US administration on coal-fired plants, effectively making them untenable without expensive carbon capture technology.

    “In Australia there are taxpayer subsidies to keep these plants open, whereas in the US, China and parts of Europe, the government is taking actual direct action to close them down,” Cousins said.]

    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/19/australia-urged-shut-coal-fired-power-plants-urgently-huge-emissions

  13. Steve

    A tradition has to start somewhere. As for numbers after the election in about 49 days its looking like a minority or one or two seat majority.

  14. poroti

    Good point. BCassidy just finished his segment with Jon Faine on ABC radio. As per usual, he says nothing much of value. What a waste of hot air

  15. In order to get an indep[endent speaker, we would need to have a minority Government situation, or perhaps a ‘marriage of convenience’ coalition including minor parties in a position to extract concessions

    Not the long-established Liberal-National Coalition, but maybe Labor-Green perhaps? Or LNP with a more successful version of PUP? Or perhaps either major grouping with a new Australian Democrats style party). The changes would then need to be legislated and hopefully no Government gets a Senate majority for at least 3 terms. By that stage, we would hopefully have an established convention of an indepenndent Speaker.

    I can’t see any secure majority government giving p the huge advantage of appointing a partisan Speaker.

  16. Steve777@79

    In order to get an indep[endent speaker, we would need to have a minority Government situation, or perhaps a ‘marriage of convenience’ coalition including minor parties in a position to extract concessions

    Not the long-established Liberal-National Coalition, but maybe Labor-Green perhaps? Or LNP with a more successful version of PUP? Or perhaps either major grouping with a new Australian Democrats style party). The changes would then need to be legislated and hopefully no Government gets a Senate majority for at least 3 terms. By that stage, we would hopefully have an established convention of an indepenndent Speaker.

    I can’t see any secure majority government giving p the huge advantage of appointing a partisan Speaker.

    I think a non-independent speaker in a majority chamber is a farce. The opposition members might as well not show up if the speaker won’t even attempt to try to be impartial.

  17. You have to wonder about the impacts of financial company speculation when news about whether the US reserve might raise interest rates from 1/4 to 1/2% sooner rather than later can shift the value of currencies by 2-3% and sharemakets by significant amounts.

    Surely ABC and decent news services can stop breathlessly reporting such shifts and start saying that massive speculation and computer generated buying and selling is a serious threat to economic stability.

  18. Leaving aside the political angle for one moment, I think it is a good thing that the Abbott Government’s rhetoric has turned away from “budget emergency/reduce the deficit at all costs” to a more sanguine view of government debt.

    The Australian economy is slowing and the last thing we need is a big dose of Otto Niemeyer-style austerity. Sure, Abbott and Hockey might look like complete hypocrites, but I would hope that Labor would now attack them on the basis that the “budget emergency” stuff was always a lie and that they knew it, rather than on the basis that the deficit is a big problem and the Government needs to drop everything and address it.

  19. “@srpeatling: Sen. Leyonhjelm says PM must “reveal if the word liberal means anything to him or if it’s just a brand name like Datsun on Krispy Kreme.””

  20. “@srpeatling: SEn. Leyonhjelm says govt MP Wyatt Roy is considering co sponsoring his #marriageequality bill. Other govt MPs also considering it.”

  21. Cyclone Nathan’s path seems to shift a little further North on each projection. The crossing point now is close to Cape Flattery, site of the world’s largest silica mine, but the area is very sparsely inhabited.

  22. Re Meher Baba @86: I would hope that Labor would now attack them on the basis that the “budget emergency” stuff was always a lie and that they knew it, rather than on the basis that the deficit is a big problem and the Government needs to drop everything and address it.

    Completely agree. The Abbott Government wanted to use the ‘budget emergency’ not only as a stick with which to whack its opponents, but as cover for slipping in an radical neoliberal reform agenda, kept hidden before the last election because they apparently decided they had no hope of selling to the voters.

  23. Leyonhelm says Cormann is the best of the govt negotiators. Meets personally and treats him with respect. At the other end of the spectrum the ministers simply refer the crossbenchers to their advisors. L says this is not the way to succeed.

  24. They would have to be crazy to hold a Double Dissolution election… oh, wait…

    Puff said yesterday that the punters hadn’t suffered enough. They need to be in “torches and pitchforks” mode before an election. I’ve argued this myself many times. Too many of the mugs think its still fun.

    Sadly, they remain in “Reality TV” mode, where a proportion of them are still falling for sleazy circus tricks and insane assertions like, “I am a Fixer” from Pyne and “I am Medicare’s Greatest Friend” from Abbott (you’ll all have your favourite reality-defying brazenities). They’re still switching on to be entertained.

  25. On the Speakership, the real question is getting the respect of the House.

    If the Speaker cannot enforce discipline on both sides of the House it will not work. As Jim Cope found, even the glorious Whitlam government was not prepared to back a Speaker trying to do his job when he named Clyde Cameron.

    This Speaker is far and away the worst I have seen. It is a personal, rather than political failing, and actually reflects badly on the government in power because it encourages the Opposition to play up and make the Parliament look like a circus. In that situation, it rebounds on the Government which cannot manage Parliament, even though it is not necessarily the Government at fault. In this case, though, it is – and the extreme over-indulgence of the theatrics on the government side only makes it look more stupid.

    There are people on the conservative side of the House who are patently more fit to be Speaker than Dolores Umbridge. First and foremost is Bruce Scott. Whether Dolores goes with a change in Liberal leader is another matter. I can only hope.

  26. @abcnews: Cormann ‘not involved in double dissolution talk’ http://t.co/en2H4LR8OI

    I think the threat of a DD is real, if only because if Abbott has to go down he would much rather be known for being defeated in an election, rather than being ignominiously dumped by his own party mid-term for utter incompetence. That way, in his mind, history’s verdict will be he valiantly went down fighting for his “principles”, desperately trying to save Australia from itself.

    It’s not Cormann et al driving this, and nowhere does it say Abbott needs to get permission of the party room to hop in the car for a quick trip to Yarralumla…

  27. lizzie @ 96

    [Leyonhelm says Cormann is the best of the govt negotiators. Meets personally and treats him with respect.]

    For any other government, including Howard’s, this would be the first step, even before you got down to horse-trading on policy. For Abbott’s Government, it is a bridge too far. You really have to wonder what political planet they are on where they think, despite both logic and repeated evidence, that offensive, abusive boorishness is a positive.

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