The first Newspoll state poll for New South Wales since the Baird government’s re-election in March, and also the first conducted by Galaxy, is a thoroughly unremarkable post-election result, giving the Coalition a lead of 56-44 compared with 54.3-45.7 at the election. The primary votes are Coalition 47% (45.6% at the election), Labor 33% (34.1%) and Greens 11% (10.3%). Premier Mike Baird’s approval rating is 63%, compared with 57% in the pre-election Newspoll, with disapproval down six to 23%. Labor leader Luke Foley is down three on approval to 35% and steady on disapproval at 37%. Baird’s lead as preferred premier has widened from 54-27 to 57-19. The result was aggregated from polling conducted throughout August and September.
I think it’ll take a figure of Whitlam-esque stature to return the NSW ALP to power. Best get comfortable in the opposition benches, who knows when that will happen.
The people are not ready to give labor another chance anytime soon.
Most labor figures I talk to vilify me for saying this, but electricity privatisation is the RIGHT way to go. The proceeds will pay for vital transport infrastructure.
If unions let carr sell the generators in 1997, the revenue would have been far greater and we would have had every missing rail link by now. We have since been left behind.
To his credit, baird has finally solved this critical policy impasse.
“I think it’ll take a figure of Whitlam-esque stature to return the NSW ALP to power.”
Why? They haven’t tried someone with a bit of personality or leadership experience since losing power, just faceless men who struggled to convince they are even interested, let alone capable, of leading the state.
Foley is just horrible, in so many ways.
I don’t think Foley takes much of the blame myself.
When the last Labor government was a corrupt rabble, you have to be relying on the incumbents getting it horribly wrong before Labor will be voted in again.
Given that Baird is personally popular and is running a (mostly) moderate government that seems to be addressing some long overdue infrastructure issues, there is not much that Foley can do, in my opinion.
Outside of destroying TAFE and implementing the disastrous ‘going home staying home’ plan, Bambi is travelling well.
Yes Unitary State – the electricity sale should have gone through when it was actually worth something. Unfortunately, the sparkies, surely the most feather-bedded group in all of the NSW public service were too powerful and Carr too weak. I used to ask people why electricity HAD TO BE government run when Gas had been successfully and equitably run privately for 150 years. I never got an answer.
BUT I think there is hope. The government’s decision to bring back trams to George Street is going to bring a whole lot of pain to anyone who works in the CBD. This has the potential to alienate a lot of people.
Foley – horrible?
I think he is the one shining light in a particularly bleak caucus.
[I don’t think Foley takes much of the blame myself.
When the last Labor government was a corrupt rabble, you have to be relying on the incumbents getting it horribly wrong before Labor will be voted in again.
Given that Baird is personally popular and is running a (mostly) moderate government that seems to be addressing some long overdue infrastructure issues, there is not much that Foley can do, in my opinion.]
Yeah, I don’t think there’s anything much wrong with Foley. Even Gough himself would struggle to get any traction against Baird at the moment. Foley is definitely electable, it’s just that he’s leading a party that was completely unelectable not so long ago and are up against a guy who is moderate, competent, and comes across as friendly and reasonable. No tougher gig in politics than opposing Baird right now. Foley’s job is to use the time in opposition productively and come up with a long term policy program that a future Labor government can implement, whilst knowing full well he probably won’t be part of it.
I’d be surprised if the next election is Baird vs. Foley.
#10, correctamondo. Baird will be in Canberra trying to resurrect the Tories.
Unitary State@2
Yeah, like happened in Victoria?
Misery@10
You think ICAC will get Baird? 😐
“Yes Unitary State – the electricity sale should have gone through when it was actually worth something.” Why sell an essential asset? Ideology driven by what? And the irony is had Costa (he’s Andrew Bolts mate now) succeeded and Labor flogged it all before we forked out many more millions to gold plate the network Mike the Dimpled (no I don’t like him – his dad yes) would not have that opportunity. Maybe what Costa was on about when he said you all will look like dickheads tomorrow. Indeed we all do.
It’s always interesting to see those who have no idea how Labor Powerbrokers work talking about our prospects.
Bemused and keyman
Paul Keating supports electricity privatisation. Are you implying he was wrong all this time? Paul Keating is never wrong.
Oakeshott country
Do you mean alienate a lot of people as in public sector workers?
Yes I agree, with what you say. Bob carr was actually an ideal man to be premier , he was very very bright. He had incredible vision for the state despite the fact he never wanted to be premier as his party forced it onto him when his whole life he actually dreamt of foreign affairs in federal politics. He was simply let down in his potential by unions, the public sector and the Labor party executives at the time which was still stuck in the 1950’s.
Unitary State@16
Yes, he was wrong I regret to say.
He was also wrong with other privatizations.
It is rather bizarre that Australian electricity distributions companies can now be owned by foreign governments but not our own.
Having said that, I can see no way of going back.
Bemused
It is because of people like you that Labors primary vote is consistently below 40%.
Every privatisation proposal has to be assessed on its relevant merits and disadvantages. There cannot realistically be a blanket one sided ideological approach either way.
US
Polls consistently show the majority of the electorate is opposed to privatization.
bemused@20
It depends on how the question is asked. When voters are asked if they support privatisation they mostly say no. When voters are asked if they support selling something and using the funds for something specific and likely to be considered worthwhile their response is different. Ipsos showed this last election with 31-62 vs 48-47 for the two ways of asking the question.
Kevin bonham
My point exactly.
By the 1990’s the federal government policies had separated generation from distribution with regards to electricity. It was a burden on the public purse to keep the generators in the government sector.
As oakeshott country has clarified – gas has been privately and equitably run for over 150 years. What makes that so impossible for electricity? There is no straightforward argument against electricity privatisation.
The fact of the matter is baird has already sold them. So labor just needs to accept that and move on. They should have waived it in parliament this year.
The fact that john Robertson destroyed iemma’s democratically elected government over this issue shows that the state party is still full of figures that have no interest in making the party electorally competitive again, they are simply there to feather their own best.
Whilst the last state election result was a disaster for labor, it would have been far far worse had Robertson stayed on, the 2PP result would probably have in fact still had a 3 in front of it. Whilst foley is not charismatic, it is wrong to blame him for anything.
Many Seats that have historically been safe labor territory continue to be held by the liberals on margins of over 10%. Labor has yet to reclaim its heartland.
US
It was only about ideology for the miniscule proportion of the population that attends branch meetings.
The real issue was defending the feather bedding of the Sparkies – God forbid that they wpiuld actually have to be accountable for their jobs.
Unlike Keyman I have no knowledge of the inner workings of Labor powerbrokers but I wonder how the Sparkies became so important and how they got both Robertson and the assassin in the cardigan into leadership roles.
Oakeshott country
On a federal level, can you possibly ever imagine that a governer general would interfere and make observations known on day to day politics? Can you ever have imagine income tax cuts, the NDIS, the carbon tax or the NBN not being allowed to be ratified into law purely because of the governer General not liking them? It is unethical.
Well that was exactly what was happening with the NSW labor party. The party executive (I.e the head office of the party in Sussex street which was under the tight control of unions supervised by john robertson) was interfering with the policies of the parliamentary labor party. It was a catastrophy. Morris iemma won in 2007 and had a mandate to develop his own policies as he wished, which included privatisation of generators for the sake of sydney metro tunnel – which is exactly what mike baird is just so happening to be doing today. The head office of the party needed to have respected iemma’s mandate and let him do whatever he wanted to do.
So a biased question gets a biased result.
What a surprise!
Some good reading here: http://www.theage.com.au/business/sunday-explainer-why-is-electricity-so-expensive-20150925-gjvdrj.html#ixzz3mtkXeZRN
In relation to Victoria it concludes:
[So, if the wholesale price is steady and the cost of transmission hasn’t been blown out by “gold plating”, where is our money going?
There’s only one place left for it to go: to the people selling the electricity.
Dr Mountain’s report for the Brotherhood found retail costs – that’s the money you pay to the power company – had more than tripled since 2008. Last year that money was somewhere between $371 and $471 per household.
So, why do they charge us so much for electricity? The best answer may be simply that they can.]
Now how would we go if we prefaced our question by telling the punters the information in that article, particularly the section I quoted?
The old SEC paid dividends to the State Govt.
The present Vic Govt wants to sell off the Port of Melbourne (disgusted as a lease).
The appeal is that they take a sugar hit now from the sale in place of the ongoing revenue stream from owning the port.
They also ceded control of the port and who knows what the future may hold that will want them to make changes resulting penalties?
Bemused
You neglect to mention that prices often fluctuate over time for a wide variety of reasons, privatisation only being one of many.
In any case, the privatisation proposals in NSW never suggested that pricing regulations be outsourced. It was always intended for the government to keep monitoring that.
The argument that privatisation would have been “the iemma governments work choices” is plainly wrong and ill informed to say the least. We are going to be better off now as state political discourse has been held back and suppressed for over 20 years due to this issue.
bemused@25
But if a government announces a policy of selling X to do Y and the question is about that policy, how is that biased? Of course, it may be that the government then sells X and doesn’t do Y, but that’s not the fault of the pollster, nor does it make the question about the policy biased.
I think it’s more that a question about privatisation without any mention of the benefits evokes an automatic “yuck” response, which is actually quite unreliable because the voter is only thinking about the downside and not the upside. It’s a reverse version of the “pony poll” problem. The term “pony poll” is used to denote idealistic questions that people tend to say yes to (like “Would you like the government to give you a pony?”) just because they sound nice, without thinking it through.
Kevin Bonham@27
It fails to mention any downside of selling X.
“Let us sell X and we can give you this shiny thing Y” should more properly be “Let us sell X and forfeit ownership, control and future revenue to use for giving you shiny things, and just sell X in exchange for a one off shiny thing Y”.
Iemma sees to have got swept up in the mad ideology of Kennettism. A shame as I had thought he was pretty good up until then.
If private owners can run it at a profit, after paying all their exorbitant salaries and bonuses, then in public ownership, with good management installed, it should return a motza.
Unitary State@26
Future uncertainty will be factored into the price by the buyer and they seem to be very creative in approaching regulators to get prices increased.
24
The NSW ALP ran on a platform of not selling off the electricity assets. The Unions are part of the ALP and represent many voters. Many voters, particularly voters who vote ALP or preference the ALP, oppose privatisation. The ALP`s loyalty pledge does not extend to being bound to vote for a bill contrary to the platform and thus the MPs who opposed it in Parliament or threatened to were not breaking the pledge and thus in no way bound to support it.
The Governor-General and the state Governors making policy decisions would be doing so using undemocratic royal power. The ALP executive is elected to run the ALP. The ALP MPs are elected by voters numbering boxes with ALP next to them. The ALP executive has every right to use its authority to clamp down on Tory entryists trying to impose right-wing policies.
A great theoretical method of governance. The problem was NSW’s government devolved into a Russian Doll model. Government was controlled by parliament which was controlled by the ALP Caucus which was controlled by Centre Unity which was contolled by The Terrigals which was controlled by Eddie Nd Joe. They in turn took orders from the Sparkies lead by Robertson. The ‘Will of the People’ was perverted by the internal debts and allegiances of a small section of the party. A section lead by people found to be corrupt by ICAC
I fear it will be a long time before that stench disappears and the NSW ALP again becomes electable
Oakeshott Country@31
To a greater or lesser extent ALP factions operate like that in all states.
It is a scourge we would be well rid of. But how?
Tom the first and the best
What you said is immaterial to the wider fact that iemma was in charge of the parliamentary labor party and was unambiguously the premier of NSW, which the head office in Sussex street had no moral right or reasoning to challenge the authority of. The executive has to respect whatever the internal processes of the parliamentary party are.
The labor party in Queensland reneged on its promise after the 2009 election, but the executive respected anna blighs decision and the parliamentary party was united behind her. Sure, they were wiped out in 2012, but bounced back in less than 3 years to reclaim government purely because they were disciplined and free from outside influence in policy making decisions. The fact that NSW Labor has still not recovered and will not recover anytime soon is testament to the fact that there is no respect for appropriate policy making processes. As there is no substitute for appropriate policy making processes, the party is not electorally competitive as we speak.
You fail to acknowledge the principal, rather people such as yourself attack an individual policy in and of itself – the fact that a debate which is blown out of all proportion should justify destroying a government between 2007 and 2011 and relegating them to permanent opposition, yet you are indifferent to the wider policy and political ramifications is beyond any logical understanding on the behalf of the average working class voter.
33
NSW is a democracy. That means when people do not like a policy, they can challenge it. Iemma was the leader of the NSW Parliamentary ALP, not the dictator or the NSW ALP. NSW voters and NSW ALP members have a right to organise to lobby their MPs to vote for or against a particular policy, particularly if what they are lobbying for is to stick to the policies that were taken to the election. The ALP is a party there to get the policies of its members into place, not just a campaign machine for the parliamentary party.
There should have been an intervention into the NSW ALP in about 2008 and Rees should not have been deposed in 2010. Rees had stablised the polling and it went down further under Kenneally.
Tom the first and best
Of course party members and unions members have every right to lobby MP’s on policy decisions as they wish. However what the ultimate decision is should be purely up to the parliamentary party as all of them were popularly elected and not by the head office executive in Sussex st.
The people of NSW have the right to vote once every four years and judge whether the government is to be trusted on their promises for reelection or not. It should not be any other way.
As long as other views to this essential reality are held for whatever reason, state labor will be electorally uncompetitive.
Unitary State@35
You don’t understand the ALP do you?
The party makes the policy and the parliamentary party implements it with some wriggle room as to timing and detail.
When the politicians get a rush of blood to the head and try to ignore this, disaster invariably follows.
bemused@28
Hmmm. I’d have thought it was completely obvious to the respondent that forfeiting ownership and revenue is often what “privatise” means and that these downsides are precisely why people tend to say no when asked the question in isolation. Otherwise I do not see why they would say no. (In this case ownership is not actually forfeited for good, but for people alive today it may as well be.)
As for “control”, this depends upon sale conditions, and governments don’t tend to give up electricity properties without substantial regulation.
Is the Queensland Newspoll new? Timeframe is pretty vague.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/09/28/qld-labor-latest-newspoll
Bemused
What you are essentially saying is that you passionately beleive that there can be absolutely no room for reform to the nsw labor party structure and culture, ever. You think it is purely coincidental that people who had voted labor all their lives did not do so in the past 2 elections. And as a labor party member yourself, you are also implying that you would rather see an indefinite coalition government than see the labor party govern ever again.
39
There is a difference between opposing all change in the ALP and opposing a particular change in the ALP. The NSW ALP needs (and has done so for many years) a Commonwealth ALP intervention of the type performed in Victoria in 1970 to make the party structure more democratic. That is entirely different from disempowering the party structure.
Tom the first and best
It already happened in 2013 and it was not enough.
The executive head office should simply not
Interfere with the policy making process of the parliamentary party. End of story.
Unitary State@39
If you read that into what I said, particularly in the light of all I have previously said about the NSW branch of the ALP then you have zero powers of comprehension.
Unitary State@41
You oversimplify.
If the parliamentary party is acting against a clear policy determined by the party and which it took to an election then it deserves to be reminded of what it is doing and why it should not.
That said, I have been speaking in support of thoroughgoing intervention in the NSW branch of the ALP since 1970 when the intervention that took place was weak and entirely ineffective. So it was too in 2013.
Kevin Bonham@37
The revenue side is usually either not mentioned or very much downplayed.
It is a case of wanting infantile ‘instant gratification’ vs what is best in the longer term.
PPPs are another scam. ‘Look, you can have these shiny things and it doesn’t increase debt.’ Only part of the story and much better deals can be done for the taxpayer.
Luke Foley who was gifted his seat by a Labor Councillor from Auburn council who is mates with what looks like Auburn’s version of Eddie Obeid.
Brilliant.
Bemused
It is frankly not the job of the executive head office to control whether or not the party keeps their promises or not. It is entirely up to the parliamentary party to risk losing face and the people decide every four years if they are trustworthy or not.
In any case, had the generators been sold in 1997 as was originally intended, then the proceeds would have been far greater than what we are getting today and we would have already had the first class transport system in sydney we unfortunately don’t have today. You are thinking ideologically and not rationally.
Unitary State@46
Are you an ALP member or just another dilettante offering free advice?
Party officers represent the interests of members when they draw the attention of the Parliamentary Labor Party to the policy on which they were elected.
If the two sides are irreconcilable, then dire consequences ensue, including the possibility of a split as has occurred before.
Bemused
If electricity had been privatised in 1997 or 2008, the party would be better off today and more electorally competitive than what it really is.
Not only that but we would have vital infrastructure.