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”.
Is it just me, or is this Herald-Sun piece suggesting that returned soldiers are likely to be criminal gangs in the making?
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/guns-in-skilled-hands-should-worry-us-all/story-fni0ffyu-1227272894298
I must admit, I’m bewildered by all of this…
sprocket
It might really be WOW if NewsPoll follows Morgan
Yay. #libspill v3.0 ???? 🙂
“Wow” seems to be PVO’s standard reaction to any Newspoll. He probably says “Wow” every morning when he sees that the sun’s risen again (although maybe that’s not so crazy).
Don
Aryan is a defunct ethnic classification.
Although the traditional way of classifying races is also a bit arguable, the Caucasian race includes the people of India, the middle east etc.
Thus, almost half the people of Asia are Caucasians.
Matt
So (using the logic of that article) we shouldn’t just ban someone who went overseas to fight alongside terrorists from returning to Australia, we should also ban those who went overseas to fight terrorists from returning to Australia….
On Morgan’s primaries I get ALP at 54%, maybe 55%, so there must be a fair bit of positive rounding for the ALP or else Morgan are using a different preference flow to me
.
Well, I agree, they are going to look exceptionally stupid.
But they will resist tax increases forever and a day, particularly because their strongest constituencies are the higher-income cohorts of Sydney and, to a lesser extent, Melbourne, the coastal suburbs of Perth and SE Queensland.
Tax changes at the higher end of the income scales will have a disproportionately higher effect in these areas than elsewhere in the economy – that is, in locations where housing costs have soared, where wealth is concentrated and where holding costs are exceptionally high.
Fiscal balance implicitly means taking the wind out of rising property markets. It means reforming -ve gearing and the tax shelters in super investment as well as soaking up some of the discretionary income and savings of high-earners. Together, these will certainly have an effect on the demand side in property markets. This has been an absolute no-go area in Australian politics since the 1980s.
The lower three quartiles of the income array are loathe to surrender any of their social income transfers. The upper two quartiles are loathe to surrender any more of their income or wealth to the social pot. There will be a very bitter contest along the age, wealth and geographic divides that now mark our society.
Somehow Labor have to find a way towards a revised social compact.
In 2 years time the deficit will be around $100 billion pa. Commonwealth spending on its own programs will be around $400 billion pa. That is a very large gap that must be bridged one way or another.
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]
FedEx,
Re Morgan poll
56-44 are based on respondent indicated preferences.
54-46 on last election’s preference flows.
lizzie, Greg Sheridan, Abbott’s bestie from uni days, was the journo who wrote the foreign aid being slashed again story.
No doubt the info was passed on the last time Tones and Greg shared a cheeky chardonnay or two.
Barney,
Whatever, the most accurate number is, the Libs are having the living suitcase kicked out of them atm.
Bowen a couple of times in. Insiders yesterday referred to a ’10 year’ program or period for budget repair.
So maybe they will look at structural reform taking effect over that period.
Very cruel Deo.
😆
Henry,
It’s got more to do with the succession than anything.
My view is that this is another Hockey inspired brainfart.
Ta Barney, I missed how Morgan did it.
briefly @2858:
Well, it’s fairly clear what the Liberals’ idea is on that point: phase out the transfer programs and tell the proles to starve.
What keeps me awake at night is that that program, cloaked in a veneer of anti-“socialism”, may actually be politically viable and end up succeeding – and destroying Australian social cohesion as we know it.
It will look decidedly worse for them if, as hinted, the LNP offer a selective tax cut at a time when the budget is in dire trouble.
The Senate will most likely not pass any tax cuts and will be able to present themselves as more fiscally responsible than the LNP. They are asking for another lesson from the Opposition and minor parties.
zoom @2856:
Or else put them under VLAD laws, or…something.
The mind boggles – I thought that the Right supported soldiers. Yet here I am, a Greenie, and more into actually helping returning servicepersons than the Right.
briefly @2867:
Tax cuts? When services are being cut all over the place, and we’re told we can’t afford to maintain our social welfare systems, education investment or healthcare spending? Tax cuts?
Are they mad?
http://theconversation.com/the-evolution-of-malcolm-fraser-was-a-wonderful-thing-to-behold-39175
A very heartfelt piece by Barry Jones whom I just love.
They have made noises about a tax cut for small business, possibly announced in the budget to take effect from July.
It is in the coalitions DNA to go to an election promising tax cuts.
The Libs are very, very lazy, Matt. If they could balance the budget and still dish out fiscal largesse, they would. For all his rhetoric, Howard never flinched at that.
But the fiscal magic pudding of a terms of trade boom is long-gone.
Now there will have to be some hard policy-work and some political risk-taking. The economic and fiscal position will demand it. The LNP have never been any good at that. They are effectively obsolete as a governing force.
Thanks Henry,
I thought it might be Sheridan, but hadn’t read the article. It might say a lot about the threat that Tony is feeling from JulieB.
Abbott has mooted a 1.5% cut in tax payable by small business and a re-vamp of childcare spending. That’s it. National finance will be reduced to a couple of token gestures.
briefly @2872:
I’ll say this: I don’t always agree with Labor’s policies, but they’re seldom (if ever!) formulated in a lazy way. I agree that in terms of practical policy, the Coalition are obsolete (and have been since they dumped Hewson after 1993), but the electorate doesn’t seen to get it yet.
Do you think that an Abbott-less Coalition could swindle another term out of the punters?
Shame.
Is that a tear in my eye, no it’s just the salt water from my last swim.
Looking forward to the budget, I think that will be the point for Labor to start scoring some runs with their platform and some more policies.
briefly @2874:
They are insane. And not just insane “bad policy” insane, insane to think that they can sell tax cuts after howling about budget “emergencies” for years and using it as pretexts to cut left, right and center.
Briefly, a question re: the escalating debt under the libs.
What are they borrowing it all for? To service existing debt?
It’s not like they are building anything with this additional debt. Got me stumped.
Barney,
Plenty say that.
But Bill’s managed a 7-8% swing to Labor doing what he thinks best. I’d let him just get on with it!
Steve777@2854 – So Van Onselen is at it again. It’s
getting a bit childish or does he just have a small vocabulary
Do you really need someone to answer that question for you?
One thing I got out of George Mega’s program last week was that Howard seemed to be claiming brownie points for acting on tax avoidance when he was Treasurer under Fraser. That would be about the “bottom the harbour” schemes. However that rort only came to public attention as on off-shoot of the Costigan Royal Commission into the Painters and Dockers union. Once that practice had been publicly exposed the Govt had no option but to act on it.
What I would like to know, but it is too late now, was the Tax Office aware of what was going on before it became public. Either they knew or they should have known. If they did know. did they advise Howard as Treasurer. If they did advise him, what action was taken or was it just buried.
Howard should be embarrassed that the bottom of the harbour schemes were able to flourish under his watch, not claim credit for stopping them.
So another ‘wow’ Newspoll for PvO. It’s all becoming a bit boy-who-cried-wolf.
Well, that’s what has been suggested. Maybe they will come up with a huge reforming budget that will set things back on course. Maybe. But if so, they are going about it in a very strange way.
The new head of Treasury would not be a reformer of this kind. Hockey has publicly disavowed any such policies. Abbott is talking cuts to taxes and higher deficits. I think they will just duck, make a few small gestures and hope for the best.
I thought the last Newspoll overstated Labor’s lead and the last Morgan understated it. So it doesn’t surprise me that the ALP 2pp in todays’ Morgan has gone up (remembering that it has to be adjusted for both the house effect that favours Labour and the nominated preference method that it uses). And it also won’t surprise me if Newspoll shows a drop in support for the ALP.
Henry @2878:
A combination of factors, I believe.
– Worsening terms of trade;
– Cyclical downswing;
– Tax cuts; and, yes
– Servicing of existing debt.
But don’t forget the new programs they did put in – for instance, instead of the ETS (making revenue for the government and cutting carbon emissions, however imperfectly) they now have Direct Action (costing billions a year in exchange for promises to cut on carbon emissions).
Barney @2881:
Hope springs eternal. It’s not unheard-of for the electorate to give power to a bunch of numpties, but I keep hoping that we didn’t give it to a pack of psychopaths.
BiS
You suck.
Darn @2885:
I’m curious – I can understand adjusting Morgan for the house effect, but why adjust for respondent-allocated preferences? Surely finding out how minor party/independent voters plan to preference next election is better than using last election’s numbers?
Revenue is growing very slowly. This is a consequence of very low nominal growth (only about 2% pa) and the declining terms of trade, which mean taxes collected from individuals are growing more slowly than anytime since the 11990 recession, while resource royalties and taxes paid by companies are falling. They also abolished the carbon tax and have not replaced the lost revenue.
As well, outlays continue to grow. They rose 8% in 2013/14 as (even very mild) inflation and demographic factors push up spending. Outlays are still growing even though they were forecast to flatten out. The growth rate will probably be 5-6% pa, maybe more.
The fiscal structure and our social compact are out of alignment. They need to be re-aligned.
I agree there is a big opening here for Labor, and I think, and hope, we are going to see them put forward some serious policy after the Cons have been forced to lock themselves into their agenda via the coming budget. Labor have been right not to reveal too much beforehand. Really is a question of timing.
briefly @2884:
That’s hardly going to dispose of the red ink…
Just saw a short NSW election ad on commercial TV saying you can just vote 1, although it did not specifically say that you should. It was “plain packaged” in black and white, no identification apart from the blurb at the end: “authorised by T. Nutt on behalf of the Liberal Party”.
Mind you, I’ve long cherished a suspicion that the Right secretly loves deficits – every time there’s a deficit, they have a ready-made excuse to cut social spending.
Using last election preferences has been shown to be more reliable I believe.
Cheers Matt. So they are partially borrowing to fund existing programs due to the downturn in revenue (iron ore etc).
On another note I see Ben Cousins has been arrested for the third time in 2 weeks. So very sad. He is headed for a squalid end unless something dramatic is done for him. Unfortunately it appears he doesn’t want to help himself.
Huh. Fair enough, although I wonder why…
Thanks briefly @ 2889.
Regarding outlays and the 8% growth. Am sure I heard Cormann today boasting how he had kept growth in govt spending to 1% or am i comparing apples to oranges.
matt, please don’t take this the wrong way but your posts are repetitive and that can be dull
Henry:
Cousins’ former team-mate Daniel Kerr is proof that you can turn your life around.
http://www.infogo.com.au/1/aa/?https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/regional/great-southern/a/26762508/kerr-heads-south-for-new-life/
Rossco – I clearly remember that time. Howard was dragged kicking and screaming to do something about it. Fraser was keen but not Howard.
Same with apartheid. Howard lagged – Fraser led.