BludgerTrack: 52.4-47.6 to Labor

Ongoing government troubles prompt a third move in Labor’s favour in successive weeks on the BludgerTrack poll aggregate, as preselection jockeying gets started in the seats of Mackellar and Canning.

The BludgerTrack poll aggregate has, almost, moved half a point in Labor’s favour for the third week in a row, the exact two-party movement on this occasion being 0.4%. This was the result of two new polls this week, one from ReachTEL and the other the regular weekly Essential Research result. Newspoll was silent this week because, social media conspiracy theorising aside, it’s the practice of The Australian to have its polls coincide with the resumption of parliament, which means next week rather than this week. Whereas last week’s movement caused four seats to tip Labor’s way on the projection, this time there is but the one, that being in Victoria.

Nothing new this week on leadership ratings, but a fair bit to report on preselection:

• The future of the plum Liberal seat of Mackellar on Sydney’s northern beaches is a hot topic following Bronwyn Bishop’s resignation as Speaker. The West Australian reports that Bishop is “under internal pressure to quit parliament immediately”, but the 72-year-old Bishop says she’s set on another term. However, the crude fact that her pension will erode the longer she is on a back-bench salary makes this a doubtful proposition. It had long been thought that her successor might be her chief-of-staff, Damien Jones, who is a member of the party’s state executive, husband of state upper house MP Natasha Maclaren-Jones and, according to James Robertson of the Sydney Morning Herald, Bishop’s “local numbers man”. However, The Australian (paywalled) reports that Jones is “seen as ‘damaged goods’”, since it was he who booked Bishop’s infamous $5227 helicopter flight to Geelong – a view expressed by Tom Switzer, a former opinion page editor of The Australian and past preselection aspirant who is ruling himself out on this occasion. Others who have been speculatively named without ruling themselves out include Julian Leeser, a former Menzies Research Centre head currently working in government relations at the Australian Catholic University; Walter Villatora, chairman of the party’s Warringah federal electoral council and a campaigner for democratising preselection reforms favoured by the religious Right faction; John Ruddick, an ally of Villatora’s in the reform push; Greg Burton, a barrister; and Jim Longley, state member for Pittwater from 1986 to 1996 and a minister in John Fahey’s government from 1992 to 1995, who is now chief executive of the ageing, disability and home care division of the NSW Department of Family and Community Services. Longley challenged Bishop for preselection ahead of the last election.

The West Australian reports that possible Liberal preselection candidates for the Canning by-election include “Mandurah mayor Marina Vergone, Murdoch University law lecturer Lorraine Finlay and party figure Nathan Gudgeon”. Another mentioned in the local press is Steve Marshall, a 57-year-old former earthworks businessman who says he will run as an independent if he doesn’t win, which doesn’t sound like a winning pitch to these ears. The West Australian also reports that Labor’s preselection candidates will include Matt Keogh, a commercial lawyer, president of the Law Society of WA, and member of the Right faction.

• Nationals veteran Bruce Scott has confirmed the long-held expectation that he will retire at the next election, making available his sprawling and safely conservative Queensland seat of Maranoa. Scott has been in the news of late due to his role as deputy Speaker – Phillip Coorey of the Financial Review reports that he hoped to replace Bishop, but the Liberals will not have the job go to a National. According to Penelope Arthur of Queensland Country Life, potential preselection contenders in Maranoa include David Littleproud, a Toowoomba bank manager; Robert Loughnan, mayor of Maranoa; and Cameron O’Neil, a Maranoa councillor. Cameron Atfield of Fairfax reports that state Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg has ruled himself out, despite being “subject of pressure from some quarters of the Liberal National Party to run for a federal seat”. Labor’s preselected candidate is Dave Kerrigan, a rural health worker.

• The ABC reports that Steve Georganas will face opposition from “long-time Labor member” Delia Brennan in his bid for Labor preselection in the Adelaide seat of Hindmarsh, which he lost to Liberal candidate Matt Williams after nine years as member in 2013. However, The Australian reports that Georganas is “widely expected to win easily”. Mark Ward, a school teacher and candidate for the state by-election for Davenport in January, has won preselection to run against Liberal incumbent and Speakership aspirant Andrew Southcott in Boothby. Labor’s preselection process for Christopher Pyne’s seat of Sturt is ongoing.

• My paywalled Crikey contributions over the past fortnight or so concern Labor’s position on boat turnbacks and the contrast presented with the Labour Party in Britain, which appears poised to choose hard left ideologue Jeremy Corbyn as its new leader; the Tasmanian Greens preselection process that will shortly see former federal party leader Christine Milne succeeded by former state party leader Nick McKim; a Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry that appears to have been established due to Coalition concerns about emergency services union activists campaigning for Labor while wearing work-related apparel; the state of play in Western Australian state politics as the parties grapple with the implications of a just-announced redistribution; and, in yesterday’s edition, the coming prime ministership of Nick Xenophon.

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.

1,276 comments on “BludgerTrack: 52.4-47.6 to Labor”

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  1. Dee

    [Factional rule killing ALP: Rudd
    Kevin Rudd has blasted Labor’s factional warlords and union ­bosses for refusing to cede power to rank-and-file members at last month’s national conference, warning that if the party does not democratise, then its ability to win elections will]

    That must be why the ALP is languishing in the polls 🙂

    FFS will Rudd ever just stfu or will he continue to show all of the loyalty and commitment of Graeme Richardson.

  2. And the local wine industry recognises the impact of climate change —

    [“We had a very early vintage due to the heat and with the frosting from the year before the crop was down,” he said.

    See your ad here
    “It was a very compressed vintage; it didn’t spread out like other years.”

    Mr Pfeiffer said climate change and more autumn rainfall during the growing season posed new challenges for winegrowers.

    “We’ve had more autumn rainfall than ever … now we expect rain events in March and April,” he said.

    Mr Pfeiffer said growers were considering different winegrape varieties in view of new weather patterns.

    He said the implication of climate change on the wine industry was the 64,000 dollar question.

    “In the worst extremities we’d have Rutherglen being the next Griffith in 20 years,” he said.

    “It would be considerably warmer with much more irrigated water.”]

    http://www.bordermail.com.au/story/3259212/crop-weathers-storm-as-climate-fight-brews/?cs=11

  3. [ BK
    Posted Thursday, August 6, 2015 at 8:54 am | Permalink

    A clinical assessment of Abbott by Nikki Savva. ]

    She is not mucking around either, extract –

    [ It is a sad state of affairs when backbenchers decide that their leader cannot be trusted to make decisions on their behalf.

    Actually it is more than sad. It is ominous. It reveals two potentially lethal factors at play inside the Abbott government. The first is that MPs are sick of being taken for granted. The second is that they don’t trust their Prime Minister to get it right.

    Coalition MPs had serious doubts before about Tony Abbott’s judgment. Now, the well is almost dry. The fact they have told him he can have no say in who should replace Bronwyn Bishop as Speaker speaks volumes about their assessment of his political acumen.

    It goes beyond a loss of faith in him and his captain’s calls, or whether he should have ­appointed her to the job. It has reminded them, as if they needed reminding, that little or nothing has changed from his first days in the job, nor from the time of his ­reawakening after his near-death experience.

    They have witnessed, again, an apparent inability or unwillingness to grasp the damage an issue has caused or is likely to cause, then an apparent inability or unwillingness to do what is necessary to resolve it.

    Government members from backbench to frontbench are furious with Bishop for the excesses, and equally angry with their Prime Minister for prolonging their agony.

    Every captain’s call made by Abbott as Prime Minister has ended in disaster….

    No lessons seem to have been learnt from the previous episode, every mistake appears destined to be ­repeated.

    The pattern is the same. A problem arises or it is created. Like all news of life-threatening conditions, the first response is to deny there is anything amiss. It is ­allowed to fester. It runs unchecked for days or weeks. It ­causes serious damage to the Prime Minister, to his government or to the body ­politic, then eventually, belatedly, after much kicking and screaming there is an acceptance of the ­inevitable.

    To cite just a few previous examples: the extravagant paid ­parental leave scheme; the original cabinet that declared women surplus to requirements; the first outbreak of an entitlements scandal a month after the election which, if handled properly, might have prevented all this; the first budget; the broken election promises; the denial that any promises had been broken, which became the lying about lying project; the introduction of dukes and dames; trying to hoodwink his own cabinet on citizenship changes after they had twice been rejected by the national security committee.

    Each and every wound self-­inflicted. Each made worse than it needed to be….

    As the Bishop saga dragged into its third week, Liberal MPs were in despair…..

    As a last resort they threatened to abstain or vote against Bishop in a no-confidence motion.

    Abbott was being crippled by the controversy….

    ….Abbott faces a difficult rebuilding task….

    …..must also, before it is too late, work harder to win back the respect of a swathe of his backbenchers.

    Absent improvement, pretty soon they could again be asking themselves why they have someone in the top job they think can’t do it properly. It will not be ­rhetorical. ]

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/prime-minister-tony-abbott-must-hastily-win-back-his-backbenchers/story-fnahw9xv-1227471643298

  4. Morning all
    Thanks BK for dawn patrol.
    A jewellery store in Sydney at the corner of Park and Pitt Sts has a sign :
    SPECIAL BRONNIE CLEARANCE
    All PEARLS ON SALE

    This is the sort of place that sells opals to tourists

    Also I saw the Women’s Weekly picture
    It reminded me of American Sniper, his credo was God, Family and Country

  5. Got the “Win10 is ready to install on your PC” message this morning.

    Will get some backups done, read some more reviews on it and proceed in the next few days.

  6. JW

    [ FFS will Rudd ever just stfu or will he continue to show all of the loyalty and commitment of Graeme Richardson. ]

    Past behaviour is usually the best predictor of future behaviour …

  7. dave

    [ Will get some backups done, read some more reviews on it and proceed in the next few days. ]

    Make sure you read about altering the standard privacy settings, or you’ll find Microsoft has stolen your identity plus all your personal info. It’s mind boggling!

  8. [confessions
    Posted Thursday, August 6, 2015 at 8:34 am | PERMALINK
    Coles is testing in WA a new tactic in the supermarket giants’ tussle for the petrol dollar by offering 4¢-a-litre fuel discounts to RAC members.
    ]

    I honestly can’t understand why anyone would get excited about 4c off a litre. I pay about about $75 for a tank of petrol and get about $2 off. Big deal.

    The days of genuine petrol discounting are well and truly gone. What we have now is just smoke and mirrors.

  9. vic

    [Abbott is in Geelong today to announce an Advanced Manufacturing centre to be built at Deakin University at a cost of 14 million dollars]

    I wonder if he’ll catch a train? 😀

  10. I installed Windows 10 the other day. I initially did an in place upgrade to associate my License with Windows 10. It wasn’t running to well after the initial upgrade so I then did a fresh install where I wiped everything. It’s been running fine since the fresh install. I reckon it’s much better than Windows 8 and in my opinion will be an easier transition for people still running Windows 7. Still, it’s early days.

  11. [ dave

    Posted Thursday, August 6, 2015 at 9:15 am | Permalink

    Got the “Win10 is ready to install on your PC” message this morning.

    Will get some backups done, read some more reviews on it and proceed in the next few days.
    ]

    Dave, Woody Leohard’s Column is always a good read – without FUD …

    Privacy and advertising in Windows 10: Both sides of the story

    http://www.infoworld.com/article/2956715/microsoft-windows/privacy-and-advertising-in-windows-10-both-sides-of-the-story.html?nsdr=true

  12. The only problem I have with Savva’s piece is that something deep inside her hopes he can retrieve the respect of his MPs.

  13. Sir Mad Cyril

    [ Windows 8 and in my opinion will be an easier transition for people still running Windows 7. Still, it’s early days. ]

    Common rules for upgrading any Microsoft Operating systems:

    Rule 1. Don’t.
    Rule 2. If you do have to, wait till at least the first bug fix release (i.e. wait till the geeks and fanboys have found all the really disastrous bugs!).
    Rule 3. Never do an upgrade install – always do a fresh install. (you’ll wind up having to do this eventually anyway, so save yourself some time and heartache)
    Rule 4. See Rule 1.

  14. I could have sworn that Shorten is implying that he has nothing against the Carmichael coal mine, but rather against the process Greg Hunt has been putting into pushing the decision through.

    I think if he was to continue to support a 50% RET, he needs to discourage that kind of thinking (of supporting new coal mines). The mine will not have a life of more than 15 years in the current climate and a 50% RET.

  15. Barrie Cassidy is away this week. So the ABC774 political segment was done by Ulhmann. He reckons if, and he emphasised if, Abbott is dumped as leader. Scott Morrison is the next likely candidate.

  16. Raaraa

    Shorten said that any mine approval had to tick all the scientific and environmental boxes. Obviously not done by GHunt.

  17. Player One

    I’m one of the “geeks” you refer too. I work in IT so upgrading Windows is no biggie for me. I could always go back to Win 8 or Win 7 if I wanted too.

    The other rule for upgrading Windows is to BACKUP everything before you start.

  18. Phoenix

    Thanks for that article. Windows 10 is worse than I thought, since I believed after reading various other articles that you could disable the torrent of personal information it wants to send to Microsoft servers. Seems not!

    I will definitely NOT be using Windows 10!

  19. Sir Mad Cyril

    [ The other rule for upgrading Windows is to BACKUP everything before you start. ]

    Yes, of course – should have made that Rule 0!

  20. dave @ 81

    with abbott and the LNP in power australia is definitely on the…..we have never had a government that terrorized and attempted to intimidate and deceive its citizens like this government….

  21. Socrates wrote:

    [The AWACs aircraft have a powerful but conventional radar. Flying high above ground, their horizon is much further away. However they still cannot detect beyond that horizon. Their detect range is about 650km for high flying objects. They can also fly a long way. So if they knew in advance where MH370 was going down they could fly to within 650km of it and detect the plane.]

    I wasn’t talking about AWACs. I was talking about the only really foolproof way tp protect an isolated, but huge and important base in the middle of nowhere (or about as “nowhere” as any place on Earth): satellites.

    If I had a hat, I would eat it if Diego Garcia doesn’t have 24/7 satellite surveillance coverage of every inch of the Indian Ocean. This would be surveillance that can pick up missiles, military aircraft, conventional aircraft, surface ships and have a good go at detecting submarines.

    No matter what type of surveillance you can think of, the US military has thought of it and put a satellite up to put it into effect. This would go double for Diego Garcia, which would be effectively defenceless if it only relied on radar, with its short lead times and horizon-limited range.

    We’re not talking about some place on the American mainland with one side a continent seething with military bases and surveillance, and the other side (either side, Atlantic or Pacific) a virtual American lake, populated by warships and satellites dedicated to one purpose: the defence of the Homeland and the elimination of any threats.

    I’m talking about a tiny pinpoint, a 40 kilometre diameter atoll in the middle of a completely uninhabited ocean (uninhabited by design, in fact). Threats can come fro 360 degrees at any time. Don’t underestimate the paranoia (much of it well-placed) of the American military. They don’t sit around waiting for things to happen. They don’t set up bases and then leave them undefended or not covered by more than ample surveillance.

    This isn’t WW2, where in the middle of the ocean the first thing you knew about impending death was when someone yelled “Kamikazes! 10 o’clock!”. This is 2015, and surveillance has come a long way since the 1940s.

    Forget about satellites that only pick up afterburners because only military planes use after burners. Ditto for it picking up only missiles. The surveillance applied to Diego Garcia would be able to pick up a seagull fart from 1,000 kilometres, due to the combination of the base’s almost complete isolation and its vital importance to the geopolitical balance of power.

    I guess what I’m suggesting is that Diego Garcia only seems to be isolated. It would in fact be one of the most heavily surveilled places on Earth by necessity.

    And please don’t ask me for links as to all this fantastic equipment they would be using. If I knew how to prove conclusively what I was saying, this post would be being read out by someone at my funeral, Pauline Hanson-style.

    [But again, DG is more than 2000km from the search area, so not possible for an AWACs at DG to pick up MH370.]

    This assumes that there is anything to find in search area. It’s already been expanded twice. We’re on our third version of it. Equal confidence has been expressed about all of them. In all cases that confidence has been misplaced, to put it diplomatically.

    There are many reputations on the line regarding this search area: political reputations and oceanographic reputations. Abbott has already gone off at the mouth about it. If it is found in the search area, Abbott will crow, for sure. This is heavy political stuff, especially for someone as beseiged by his own incompetence as Abbott is, with his self-appointed role as Protector Of The Nation.

    The military – Australian, Malaysian and Chinese (to name three, there are probably others involved) – have staked a lot of credibility on being right, too. They won’t want to look like fools for looking in the wrong place.

    The satellite company which supplied the original data also will not be keen on being said to have initiated a wild goose chase.

    There are many others, from the now obscure oceanographer who said MH370 had probably been found already, but they were waiting for final confirmation – a year ago – to all the others who have a vested interest in the “ever narrowing circles” theory put out in the media, the “it’s only a matter of time” strategy.

    In short there are now seriously vested interests in the south-east Indian Ocean search area being The One.

    And hey, they might be right. I’m the first to admit that. and I will join the queue to congratulate them if they are.

    But if they are wrong then Diego Garcia looms significantly as a factor in determining exactly where MH370 went down. If Diego Garcia’s surveillance assets couldn’t see MH370, then someone will be explaining why to someone very senior, and then doing something about it.

    But, of course. I believe they could see what happened, and for some reason are keeping mum about it. This does not preclude the plane going down in the current search area. Perhaps it might be as simple as not wanting to tip-off “the enemy” as to just what capabilities Diego Garcia has. The Indian Ocean is too large an area and too proximate to the world’s flashpoints to rely just on standard or local battlefield-type surveillance to protect itself.

    The only thing we know for sure about MH370 is that, in 18 months of searching nothing has been found. This leads one to put the proposition that there’s nothing there to find. So far the evidence supports this proposition.

    So, any discussion of what AWACs can see and how good radar is – both horizon-limited, and over the horizon versions – could well be moot. It doesn’t answer the question to just blandly state conventional surveillance would have picked up MH370 only if it was close. We only have the word of the US military that it didn’t see the very large, slow moving plane.

    And the word of the US military has been known, from time to time, to have elements of, shall we say, “flexibility” surrounding it.

    It took them 15 years to admit the USS Vincennes shot down that Iranian passenger jet. We’ve got a while to go to beat that record, yet. The Russians still haven’t admitted thay had anything to do with MH17. Obfuscation and misrepresentation, or just outright lying, are the norms when it comes to matter like this.

    It’s not illogical or in any way unprecedented to assume that they’re just doing what comes naturally, all over again.

  22. Abbott always uses his own version of ‘truth’:

    [On the eve of the 2013 federal election Tony Abbott tells the SBS there will be “no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS” under a Coalition government. ]

  23. victoria@77

    Raaraa

    Shorten said that any mine approval had to tick all the scientific and environmental boxes. Obviously not done by GHunt.

    I agree with that, but I think we need to stop approving more coal mines, period, if we want the 50% RET to seem realistic.

  24. [4
    Socrates

    Morning all. Briefly you left out the poor economic news. The ABS trade figures released this week included a revision to show that the foreign trade deficit in April was the worst on record i.e. Worst in the past 45 years!]

    Yes… the deficit number was a revised $4.15 bill in April.

    http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/5368.0

    2014-15 SITUATION

    [In original terms, the balance on goods and services for 2014-15 was a deficit of $21.2b, a rise of $13.3b (168%) on the deficit of $7.9b recorded in 2013-14, resulting from a $12.3b (4%) decrease in goods and services credits and a $1.1b increase in goods and services debits.]

    Export growth in original $ terms turned negative through the year just finished. In volume terms there may still be growth.

  25. [ TrueBlueAussie
    Posted Thursday, August 6, 2015 at 10:06 am | Permalink

    Why is Gillard such a liar? ]

    Truthie – I’d wouldn’t like you to have missed the following in The Australian about abbott –

    [It is a sad state of affairs when backbenchers decide that their leader cannot be trusted to make decisions on their behalf.

    Actually it is more than sad. It is ominous…..

    Coalition MPs had serious doubts before about Tony Abbott’s judgment. Now, the well is almost dry….

    It goes beyond a loss of faith in him and his captain’s calls, or whether he should have -appointed her to the job. It has reminded them….. nothing has changed from his first days in
    the job…

    …inability or unwillingness to grasp the damage an issue has caused …. or unwillingness to do what is necessary to resolve it.

    …. Every captain’s call made by Abbott as Prime Minister has ended in disaster…

    …. Each and every wound self-¬inflicted. …..Each made worse than it needed to be

    …. Liberal MPs in despair…

    …. Abbott was being crippled by the controversy…could not appear in public.

    … pretty soon they could again be asking themselves why they have someone in the top job they think can’t do it properly.]

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/prime-minister-tony-abbott-must-hastily-win-back-his-backbenchers/story-fnahw9xv-1227471643298

  26. Raaraa at 92

    Agreed, its time we put most of our focus onto renewable energy for environmental, employment & economis reasons.

  27. [The event appears to have been a hastily arranged money spinner for local Liberal MP Sarah Henderson, who holds the marginal seat of Corangamite.

    Mr Abbott is due in Geelong on Thursday morning to attend at least two events, one at a secondary school. He is expected to make a jobs-related announcement, including $25 million in funding for a local carbon-fibre project.]

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-attends-liberal-party-fundraiser-near-geelong-20150805-gismxl.html#ixzz3hzRJL7zh

  28. victoria

    Did you notice that in the Morrison family picture, mother and girls were in white and very pale blue? All very modest and virginal.

  29. [ Player One

    Posted Thursday, August 6, 2015 at 10:01 am | Permalink

    Phoenix

    Thanks for that article.
    ]

    …. worth putting in your favourites for a regular read

    : http://www.askwoody.com/

    ( Woody Leonhard’s no-bull news, tips and help for Windows and Office )

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