This week’s reading of the BludgerTrack poll aggregate, which has new results from Newspoll and Essential Research to play with, smooths away last week’s movement to the Coalition to the extent of suggesting that Labor would more likely emerge at the head of the projected minority government. Labor makes three gains on the seat projection, including one seat each in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. A drop in the Greens vote is partly down to an unusually strong result in the last Ipsos poll washing out of the system, but there have also been some slightly softer numbers for them in polls released over the last fortnight. The model doesn’t quite yet know how to deal with the new-look Galaxy-conducted Newspoll, which has come in at the high end for Labor on the primary vote in its two polls so far, in contrast with the habits of the Newspoll of old. As a result, it’s not being weighted too heavily just at the moment. Hopefully new results from more established poll series with better-understood biases will help clear the air over the coming weeks. Newspoll’s leadership numbers have caused a further loss of skin for Bill Shorten, putting Tony Abbott with his nose back in front on preferred prime minister.
Furthermore:
• The sudden death of Liberal MP Don Randall on Tuesday will presumably mean a by-election will be held in his outer southern Perth seat of Canning at some point, perhaps in September or October, assuming there’s no early general election on the boil. Mandurah mayor Marina Vergone has been mentioned to me as a potential contestant for Liberal preselection, but all such talk at this stage is in the realm of speculation. Randall’s margin at the 2013 election was 11.8%, but a fair chunk of that appears to have been his personal vote – the Liberal two-party vote in the electorate’s booths was 7% lower at the March 2013 state election than at the federal election, compared with a 1% differential statewide. I had a paywalled article on the subject in Crikey yesterday.
• Michael Owen of The Australian reports Labor’s state executive in South Australia has initiated proceedings for federal preselections in the state’s three potentially winnable Liberal-held seats, together with all those held by Labor, where the incumbents are expected to be uncontested. Steve Georganas is the reported front-runner in Hindmarsh, which he held from 2004 until 2013 when he was unseated by current Liberal member Matt Williams, who sits on a margin of 1.9%. Potential nominees for Boothby and Sturt, respectively held for the Liberals by Andrew Southcott on a 7.1% margin and Christopher Pyne on a 10.1% margin, are respectively said to include Mark Ward, a high school teacher and Mitcham councillor who was narrowly unsuccessful in the Davenport state by-election in January, and Jo Chapley, an in-house legal counsel for Foodland supermarkets who performed strongly against Opposition Leader Steven Marshall in his seat of Dunstan at the March 2014 state election.
• The Australian last week published the regular annual Newspoll survey on expectations in respondents’ standard of living over the six months to come, and found 13% expecting them to improve, down three points on an improved result last year, a steady 22% expecting them to get worse, and 64% expecting them to stay the same, up four points.
• As well as the aforementioned Canning by-election article, my paywalled contributions to Crikey over the past fortnight considered the possibility of a double dissolution, moves at the state conference of Queensland’s Liberal National Party to strengthen state executive powers to reject preselection applications and disendorse troublesome candidates, and the inconsistency of the Greens’ poll results.
Any word on whether Tone has accepted the invitation from 7.30 tonight?
[Seems very unjust that you can be sued , win & have to pay the bill ]
Hockey won on 3 issues, Fairfax won on 12. Should either party bear all the costs of the other party?
Good bludger morning!
The Sun is up, the birds are singing, Tony Abbott is still our PM and BB our House Speaker… how could life be any grander?
[The WA Labor Party looks set to push back at a new demand to give average members a greater say in the selection of Senators, raising fears left-wing unions will continue to dictate who represents the State in the Upper House.
New Federal Labor President Mark Butler will make a call at the party’s national conference this weekend for all state branches to give rank and file members a proper vote to select Senate candidates.
But the WA Labor Party – which became a national embarrassment for the ALP last year after a disastrous showing in the WA Senate election re-run – is likely to fight any attempt to erode union power.]
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/wa/a/29002345/wa-labor-shapes-up-for-fight/
Re Trog @24: a 5% increase in the GST is a Great Big New Tax on Everything, that would dwarf the impact of any ETS, for example.
A nice summation of the Bronniecopter affair.
https://twitter.com/KieraGorden/status/622398977040723969/photo/1
[The Sun is up, the birds are singing, Tony Abbott is still our PM and BB our House Speaker… how could life be any grander?]
Yep, one day closer to Abbott’s election loss and BBishop’s dethronement. Grand indeed.
Tsk, the Left resisting a move to make the Labor party more democratic. Who’d have thunk it?
Re TBA @53:
[“The Sun is up, the birds are singing, Tony Abbott is still our PM and BB our House Speaker… how could life be any grander?”]
Sydney is normally sunny in Winter, but today, like yesterday, it is cool and overcast. That doesn’t bother the birds, they’re still singing. Life is still grand. Could it be any grander? Well, if Tony Abbott were to resign the Prime Ministership and Bronwyn was no longer Speaker.
TrueBlueAussie@53
Hockey wouldn’t be feeling too Grand –
…
[@MWhitbourn: Justice White rejects Hockey’s application for injunction in respect of imputations arising from defamatory posters & tweets #HockeyFairfax
…
@bkjabour: The SMH and the Age have been ordered to pay 15% of Joe Hockey’s legal costs. He went for 95%. Estimated to have spent $1m. #hockeyfairfax
…
@LouiseCHall: .@fairfaxmedia ordered to pay 15 per cent of @JoeHockey costs in @smh and @theage. No costs in @canberratimes ]
Plus – No *grinning ear to ear* from you 🙂
[TrueBlueAussie
Posted Thursday, July 2, 2015 at 4:36 pm | Permalink
I hope Fairfax has to pay the entire $2 Mill in court costs just so people like Andrew Bolt can rub into their grubby little speculative, sour loser faces.
I will be grinning ear to ear.]
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-07/denniss-abbotts-promise-not-to-solve-our-super-tax-problem/6601112
[Last year Tony Abbott’s Government passed legislation which increased the tax on superannuation paid by low income workers. ….
The abolition of the Low Income Superannuation Contribution (LISC) means that low-income earners will pay more tax on their compulsory super contributions than they do on their ordinary wages..
According to Treasury, the cost of tax concessions for super will grow from $33.5 billion this year to more than $50 billion by 2019, at which point it will be costing more each year than the age pension it was supposed to take pressure off.]
It’s this sort of thing that makes the COALition’s cries of ‘budget emergency’ [strangely on hold recently] and media’s bleat about the cost of the ALP’s new policy on renewables and the calls for further increasing the regressive GST, totally redundant and hypocritical.
Why does Labor now support turn back the boats when for 6 Years they told us it was impossible?
Labor are all at sea without a paddle.. pardon the pun
Labor is about to completely capitulate on boats. From it can’t happen, to it’s bad it’s happening to it must continue to happen all in less than one term.
The Labor conference should be a hoot 🙂
[“Plus – No *grinning ear to ear* from you”]
Actually I was grinning ear to ear when I read in The Guardian fairfax are out of pocket about $1.35 Million Dollars.
You couldn’t read that in the Fairfax tabloids because… surprise surprise… they didn’t want to tell us how much money they lost in their “winning” article about Joe Hokey. Wonder why?
[Joe Hokey]
Has he been done for shop lifting?
True Blue
This is the reality of it. He’s not actually wanting a ‘turn back the boats’ policy at all. Apparently the policy will be left blank. What a con!!!
Mr Shorten will make his argument for the policy change at the Labor National Conference this weekend…
(A) deal is being negotiated between factions with the aim of leaving the policy platform blank on the issue of turnbacks – neither supporting it nor opposing it. This would give any future Labor government the discretion to apply the policy should it feel the need. Mr Shorten will argue on Saturday for that option.
Anyways if someone is grinning ear to ear… as always it’s the lawyers.
The legal costs are what are criminal. Perhaps rather than hold these court cases people should just donate a large sum of their money to Porsche’s for Lawyers
[ TrueBlueAussie
Posted Thursday, July 23, 2015 at 9:43 am | Permalink
Actually I was grinning ear to ear when I read in The Guardian fairfax are out of pocket about $1.35 Million Dollars. ]
You really mean their insurance company is out of pocket for most of it.
[Why does Labor now support turn back the boats when for 6 Years they told us it was impossible?]
Because turning back boats seems to work, at least in isolation: less boats get through.
However, I’m not sure they would support the gulag conditions in Manus and Nauru.
Yes, I know these places were re-opened under Rudd, but I’m not so sure he’d, or any Labor leader, would be at all complacent about the deaths, rapes and abuses that go on there.
I’d expect to see a big change in that part of the process, which can be put in place the day labor wins government.
What I do find passing strange is all this trouble and wasted time on stopping boat-borne imigrants. The lot in power now seem quite happy to allow as many Chinese Communist electricians and other tradies into the country to take our jobs.
So much for “Tony’s Tradies”. Another demographic betrayed, like the pensioners, superannuants, alternative energy workers, motor vehicle assemblers, the manufacturing workforce in general and even the poor workers in Victoria who can tomatoes. All betrayed.
So much too for Tony Abbott’s legendary “loyalty” to the people who have trusted him and to even his own promises. He is such a dud, another amateur given responsibility who f*cks it up, as he has done all throughout his life.
[The SmearStralian is all Get Bill today]
Yeah, but no-one who counts (swing voters, opinion makers) reads that worthless trash anymore.
They’ve ruined their former influence by becoming an LNP shitsheet.
Good Morning
Hockey presser now
On the boats
I oppose detention and off shore meaning turn back the boats. The reasons I do so are outlined in the Moss Report and the Gillian Triggs Report.
I still think the Labor leadership is going for transparency knowing that is enough to destroy turn back policy. As usual an evidence based policy approach.
On voting intentions I think this policy by Labor makes a hung parliament more likely than the polls are now saying as William has outlined.
Any of you saying the AS debate is over I think are deluding yourself as the Greens are not in lock step with the cruel inhumane approach of the LNP in any way.
davidwh @63,
It certainly will be a very interesting conference.
Labor will, however, endorse turn backs and will also endorse a significant increase in refugee numbers and significantly overhaul the transparency regarding the operations on Manus and Nauru.
It is all about the art of compromise.
I also find it interesting the MSM cannot see beyond the left / right “divide” meme to see what is really happening.
Many on the left actually support turn backs. Nobody likes it or embraces the policy but there is acceptance.
It should also be remembered that Shorten and Kim Carr are very much on the same page re a number of issues to be debated so the MSM line about Conference being all about left v right is very lazy and simply shallow bullshit ( I couldn’t even come close to calling it journalism ).
Anyway, as you say it will be very interesting. Heated at times but unlike the greens open for all to see.
Cheers.
Phill Vee @16:
I agree totally. I hate it when pollies fudge the answer and only give a Yes or No when hard pressed after numerous questions. I would far prefer a Yes/No up front and then the explanation. I would think much better of them for it, and they would come across as more decisive, honest, and up-front with the public.
Sorry the minority government shown by the current polls as William has outlined. I don’t think William has commented at all on Labor back flip on boats impact on polling as of yet
At last TrueBlueIdiot gets the point. Last night it was Joe Hockey who was the grinner-winner.
[Anyways if someone is grinning ear to ear… as always it’s the lawyers.]
Invest $1,000,000 to make $200,000? Sounds like a plan to me. He could have gotten it for free if he hadn’t been so almighty belligerent. But that’s what you get when fat little wog boys* throw tantrums when they don’t get the big slice of baclava from Mummy.
I can see him writing to himself telling him that the rent on his house in Canberra has just gone up to pay his legal bills. You know it makes sense in Joe World.
———–
* Joe’s description of himself, in his own book.
Why doesn’t Bill Shorten apologize for the 1200 people killed at sea on the ALP’s watch???
zoomster@21
I’m hoping the conference will err on this issue. Anna Burke was interviewed this morning saying to consider other options.
If they do go ahead with this, I hope members get a conscience vote similar to equality marriage.
“@shanebazzi: Anna Burke: I’m not in a position to support that policy. I don’t think there’s a need to be trumpeting turn-backs.”
[62
TrueBlueAussie
Why does Labor now support turn back the boats when for 6 Years they told us it was impossible?
Labor are all at sea without a paddle.. pardon the pun]
It’s not possible to “turn back boats” without also becoming a human trafficker. Australia under Abbott has become a trafficker of refugee cargoes, refugees who are freighted into captivity; into exploitation, into exemplary punishment and renewed persecution. Abbott has taken Australia into the mafia’s trade. The only other country to traffic humans is North Korea, who traffic their own citizens into slavery. So Abbott and Kim Jong-un have the same MO. Australia and North Korea are on the same page with respect to the discounting of humans into servitude and captivity.
It’s very doubtful that Labor can repair this from Opposition. Abbott has taken the country into the abyss. Abbott is degenerate. Utterly degenerate.
davidwh@63
Where would one start on abbott’s backflips and outright lies ?
The lies about lies and voters hearing promises he says he didn’t make.
The next election should be a hoot
[Why doesn’t Bill Shorten apologize for the 1200 people killed at sea on the ALP’s watch???]
Because he wasn’t leader then?
(Just a suggestion).
“@shanebazzi: Anna Burke: there will be a lot of people this morning trying to weigh up whether they’ll be able to vote for Labor at the next election.”
[” Mr Shorten will make his argument for the policy change at the Labor National Conference this weekend…
(A) deal is being negotiated between factions with the aim of leaving the policy platform blank on the issue of turnbacks – neither supporting it nor opposing it. “]
We all remember Labors previous promises about turnbacks… I mean heres one from one Kevin Rudd MP on 23rd of November 2007, 1 Day before the Election:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/defence/rudd-to-turn-back-boatpeople/story-e6frg8yx-1111114943944
[“KEVIN Rudd has taken a tough line on border security, warning that a Labor government will turn the boats back and deter asylum-seekers, using the threat of detention and the nation’s close ties with Indonesia.
In an interview with The Australian, the Opposition Leader advocated a layered approach to border security based on “effective laws, effective detention arrangements, effective deterrent posture vis-a-vis vessels approaching Australian waters”.
….
Mr Rudd said Labor would take asylum-seekers who had been rescued from leaky boats to Christmas Island, would turn back seaworthy vessels containing such people on the high seas, and would not lift the current intake of African refugees.
“You’d turn them back,” he said of boats approaching Australia, emphasising that Labor believed in an “orderly immigration system” enforced by deterrence.
“You cannot have anything that is orderly if you allow people who do not have a lawful visa in this country to roam free,” he said. “That’s why you need a detention system. I know that’s politically contentious, but one follows from the other.
“Deterrence is effective through the detention system but also your preparedness to take appropriate action as the vessels approach Australian waters on the high seas.” “]
You have to wonder… did he actually believe his own words when he was lying through his teeth?
And what of Bill Shorten? Does he also promise to turn them back and how are the Australian people meant to believe them this time?
[67
TrueBlueAussie]
The next time someone publishes something true about Hockey, he may think twice before suing.
@newmatilda: Refugee Council: Labor now to the right of some far-right parties in Europe | http://t.co/kHRHeroLVn http://t.co/eVbprfedtX
The xenophobic cry of “Look over there, its a boat’ is specifically designed and used to divert the attention of the public away from the vicious class warfare epitomized by the policies of the COALition as [partly] outlined in #61 by Richard Denniss.
Whilst attention is being focused on ‘a boat’ the COALition is transferring billions of dollars into the pockets of its rich mates, then crying budget/welfare crisis and aiming at taxing the poor even more by unnecessarily raising the GST.
Context.
So it only occurred to Shorten this week that dismantling the Howard Government’s border protection would lure illegals to Australia???
The whole things a sham. The ALP are NOT seeking to make this policy!
TrueBlueArsehat
[ And what of Bill Shorten? Does he also promise to turn them back and how are the Australian people meant to believe them this time? ]
If it is going to come down to a competition between Shorten and Abbott on who is more likely to keep their word, then you have already lost.
Actually, I am sitting back enjoying the MSM and other commentators try to get a coherent line on Bill Shorten following the two announcements re the improved RE target and the turn back policy.
On one hand he is cowering to the left with the RE policy and at the same time shifting to the right to simply gain political capital.
Everyone in the media is running around like headless chooks. Shorten is too left to win next year, Shorten is too right and will lose votes.
I am enjoying the high morality of both sides as Bill Shorten simply gets on with it.
Cheers.
The ALP should adopt an enlightened policy of taking a proportion of our offshore quota from refugee camps in the region. We should fund these so that they actually process people – unlike at present.
This will stop boats, without the expense or bullshit or abuse of defenceless people.
Once those UNHCR camps and processes are running properly,other receiving countries will take from them.
Manus and Nauru camps are crimes that should be shut down.
DF
I see you are doing exactly the line I predicted last night.
I expect Labor’s strategy team have already workshopped their reply for that one.
“@david_manne: As Labor consider #asylum boat turn-back policy, this is clear: if all States did so,the global #refugee protection framework would collapse”
I see that ACT Labor has come out and said that it is against turn backs.
I can tell you what they are for: 10% compound increase in house rates.
[I hate it when pollies fudge the answer and only give a Yes or No when hard pressed after numerous questions. ]
How do you give a yes/no answer when you are asked “Have you stopped beating your children?”?
It’s a simple fact that too many interviewers load their questions in such a way that Yes/No is a trap. Stoljar did that time and again in the TARC, rephrasing Shorten’s previous answers and then asking a question based on the rephrased version as though it genuinely followed from what Shorten said rather than what he wanted Shorten to have said.
And last night, Sales asks a question about trust in which she set up the question by saying: “Over the past month or so Australians have watched a TV show where your role knifing two PMs was laid out.” Now, if Shorten gives a straight answer it confirms not only the premise of the question, but also the hyperbolic language. So he has to come back in a different way that deliberately does not go to answer the question but gets his own political message across. If interviewers want straight answers from politicians of any colour, they need to start asking straight questions.
Which brings me to my last point. The acid test re Sales’s approach to Shorten v Abbott will not be the talking over or interrupting. it will be whether she applies this test that she announced to Shorten to stop him talking about what Abbott and the Government are doing:
[Let’s talk about what you’re doing and not what Mr Abbott’s doing in the same way as I prefer him to talk about what he’s doing and not what you’re doing.]
Given that the Coalition is far more obsessed with talking about what the Labor is ‘doing’ than about what it is ‘doing’ despite the Coalition being in power and Labor out of power, I would love to see her shut up Abbott, or indeed any of the Government Ministers, when they go straight to bagging Labor when asked about their own actions. She has let them go on to date. Let’s see if there is any change should Captain Coward emerge from his bunker and be interviewed live by her.
@MarkDiStef: I asked the same question to Peter Dutton seven times and it really pissed him off http://t.co/Owm7wum0vX http://t.co/NFFFLt4L53
DF
[Why doesn’t Bill Shorten apologize for the 1200 people killed at sea on the ALP’s watch???]
I always think that it is the supporters of the Liberals who should be apologising for those deaths at sea. While it may have been Labor’s watch, it was the Liberals doing everything possible to keep those boats coming. The Liberals were the allies of the people smugglers. The smugglers made money and the Liberals made votes.
But what is worse now is that people like you simply do not give a damn about deaths at sea. For you people, it is nothing more than a stick to beat Labor with. The lack of morality of people like you is utterly sickening. More deaths please on Labor’s watch = more votes for us. It is not surprising that it is always the Liberals who send Australians off to war to die and Labor who has to bring those who remain back.
DF
For the same reason none of Bush, Blair and Howard apologised for the wasted Australian lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.
For the same reason previous LNP governments obliged young men to fight in a war chosen on a marble dropping from a barrel indicating bad luck birthdays.
Your attempt at the “blood on its hands” line is about as sincere as Hockey’s tears when the AS boats came to grief.
It is sad that all the Abbott has really been able to do in two years is dismantle two policies put into place by Labor (one at considerable cost to us all) and when things get really tough, shout “Boats!”
You will also note that Abbott said wtte, that the LNP would continue Labor’s detention policy – which was the real breaker for the people smugglers.
It is still a puzzle to me why 47%+- of the electorate still have the stomach to support this government.
While polls are one thing, and elections are another, the LNP is currently in between loss and wipe out territory and have been for 20 months or so.
You don’t really think Abbott will ever be liked respected surely?
[It is entirely pragmatic and would seem to change the complexion of possibilities for Labor in western Sydney. Dutton’s blazing guns this morning seems to confirm this.]
Yes of course because it’s only ‘Western Sydney’ that supports inhumane treatment of refugees, and the rest of Sydney, indeed the rest of the country are totally opposed to boat turnbacks.
You ever been to Western Sydney, or like most people sprouting this kind of crap, have you never ventured further west than Glebe?
@BernardKeane: Am I missing something here or is Joe Hockey asking a senior Gallery journalist in public to promote govt policy? https://t.co/iOomRlIUmt