The BludgerTrack poll aggregate this week records a strong move back to Labor, which partly reflects the Coalition’s soft Newspoll result this week. However, it’s also indicative of how sensitive the model is short-term fluctuations now that it’s using the start of the Turnbull era of year zero, and thus only has a small number of data points. The story on the primary vote is that the Greens have recovered some of the ground they lost over the previous weeks, with the Labor primary vote remaining steady. The difference all this makes to the seat projection is rather modest, with the Coalition dropping two seats in New South Wales and one in Queensland. The leadership ratings from Newspoll give a further boost to Malcolm Turnbull’s already strong net approval rating, but the other indicators are essentially unchanged. Preferred prime minister and Turnbull’s net approval are still being determined through weighted averages of all polling since the leadership change, rather than trend measures.
What’s more:
• The meeting of the New South Wales Liberal Party’s state council on the weekend, chiefly noted for the heckling delivered to the Prime Minister, saw the demise of a proposal for all preselections to be conducted by plebiscites of party members, in place of the current system where the vote is divided between branch delegates and head office. This was despite just such a reform being advocated by a post-election review conducted by a panel headed by John Howard. However, a compromise resolution will see plebiscites conducted in one federal seat before next year’s election, two for the subsequent federal election due in 2019, and two for the next state election, also due in 2019.
• Tom McIlroy of the Canberra Times identifies Christina Hobbs, a United Nations World Food Program program officer, as a possible starter for the Greens’ Senate preselection in the Australian Capital Territory. However, the report also cites a party source saying its resources were likely to be concentrated elsewhere, particularly on “potentially difficult fights in Queensland, NSW and South Australia”.
[Actually, the evidence from Peter Hartcher’s article is that talkback and twitter interest were very low.]
If twitter and talkback were indicative of the major issues people vote on, we’d have SSM locked and loaded in law and an open door immigration policy for boat arrivals.
bemused,
Apologies.
I did say that it may have been as simple as the young woman decideding that having an abortion was not for her.
We don’t know for sure. All we get is legal eagles trying to appeal to Australin heart strings.
William,
I’ll take that as a no!
[Is there actually any moderation policy that applies to anyone but me?]
Typical whining reaction of a bully. Anyone seen TBA and GG in the same room?
Greensborough Growler@2102
Accepted.
Any polls tonight?
Airlines
There is apparently one at least and according to Michael Packi they are going in favour of the Libs.
[But even you have to admit that this issue has occupied both the msm and PB for the last few days, and has now irretrievably tied together the concepts of a “Cayman Island tax minimization” and “Malcolm Turnbull”, the man supposedly in charge of revising our tax system to close such loopholes.]
I approve of this political capital burn by Labor to highlight this serious issue, and put pressure on MT & the Spiv Party over it. Well worth a bit of short-term misinterpretation and hypocritical disapproval by various entities, including the voters via polls – voters who also say they support crackdowns on tax lurks for Big Money, but clearly just can’t stomach the shit fight required to do it.
I think it is good long term positioning by Labor against the spivs, and that those who argued from the start of Turnbull’s premiership that Labor needed to quickly & firmly define him and his political allegiances & obligations were correct.
No doubt Machiavelli has something to say about such situations.
Former Labor NSW premier Kristina Keneally:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/17/labor-is-dazzled-by-malcolm-turnbulls-ascension-but-it-must-find-clarity
[Labor was right to focus on Turnbull’s investments but wrong to allow the attack to get muddled. Labor failed to directly and constantly link questions about Turnbull’s investments to his government’s policy and legislative agenda. Instead, Labor overlaid its policy attack with references to Turnbull’s wealth, allowing government members to argue Labor was criticising the prime minister because he was rich and allowing the prime minister to cast himself as an unlikely martyr.
This mistake – get a good idea, then load it up with too many messages and watch it sink without a trace – risks emerging as a pattern for the opposition. Take the infrastructure funding announcement. It is clever policy: figuring out how to unlock superannuation funds for infrastructure projects that can generate a return, and using proven model to do it. But that message was obscured by competing messages, including an attack on Turnbull for not investing in public transport. The genius of the policy was lost in the pettiness of the politics.
In the case of the Cayman Islands questions, Labor probably took a bit of skin off Turnbull as most people outside the beltway heard “Turnbull, Cayman Islands, tax haven” and not much else. On some voters that will leave a negative impression of a rich guy out of touch with the lives of ordinary Australians. But Labor paid a high price for that minor gain. Distracted by their attack on Turnbull’s wealth, the opposition wasn’t even present in the Senate on Thursday to oppose legislation – shielding private companies from tax disclosure laws – that would have reinforced the point of the Cayman Islands questions. The legislation sailed through on the voices.]
Airlines:
We must be due for Ipsos soon.
GG @1982
100% correct and the solution is of course (over time) to switch the tax mix to taxation of unimproved land value.
Now has Malcolm Turnbull got the political capital to follow his idol Winston and advocate for it? Of course not when he has Cayman Islands share bulging out of his back pocket!
MTBW, confessions
Thanks! Ipsos hasn’t done polling in a long time, two months maybe?
Airlines
He didn’t name what poll it was.
EG,
Yeah sure. From the safety of you keyboard you’ll do it all.
Mexican @2014
Getting closer. Now if everyone were in a position to invest in Cayman Islands funds, what would happen?
Answer is that these funds exist (in their Cayman Islands form) to take advantage of various tax arrangement. This distorts their investment strategy so that it is almost completely based on purchase of existing assets (and liabilities and various other extant things) and almost completely avoid investing in new businesses that actually do things, or in expansion of such business. The reason for this is that it is much harder to obtain tax effective treatment of profits arising from businesses that actually produce output.
Malcolm Turnbull isn’t doing anything illegal and isn’t even a bad person for taking advantage of the opportunity which is almost certainly optimal for his circumstances.
2UE is a Fairfax station, so if they are talking about a new poll, it will be Ipsos. It has been two months since their last nationwide poll. It seems they spent last month’s poll budget on the Canning by-election poll. A while back, Ipsos the company responded to a twitter query by saying their next poll for Fairfax would be mid-October, so this weekend will be it.
Just so we know what the benchmark is, the last poll from August is below. It was 54-46 to ALP in TPP terms, when Abbott was on his last legs & under attack. Keep that in mind, it won’t be a movement vs last fortnight or whatever.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbotts-leadership-faces-new-dangers-as-new-ipsos-poll-predicts-coalition-wipeout-20150816-gj01ip.html
[since there is such a clear case for potential conflict of interest.]
I agree there is a potential conflict of interest but the same argument could be made about and PM and tax rates/tax deductions/super/trusts/negative gearing/allowances for politicians/rules for policing allowances/etc etc.
Thanks Leroy!
Leroy Lynch@2116
I will look at it as Ipsos doing a reset after the Lib leadership change and take interest in future Ipsos polls and the trend disclosed.
[Former Labor NSW premier Kristina Keneally:]
A political success if there ever was one …. NOT.
Methinks few will take her advice.
GG @2114
Just as it was only the Labor party of Hawke and Keating that could get rid of Centralised Wage Fixing so too it is only the Liberal party that can get rid of tax fiddling. That is the rule in politics: enduring reform occurs when one’s friend is made to give up something he treasures.
Is Malcolm Turnbull up to it? or is he like Kevin Rudd whose main idea was that it would be a awfully good idea if he was Prime Minister?
blackburnpseph@2120
I believe an appropriate term is she took a ‘hospital pass’.
There was no way she could have won.
Yes, it’s Ipsos night.
BBS
[Methinks few will take her advice.]
Yet they take the advice of the likes of Sam Dastyari.
By the by, Did you go to the Whitehorse Spring Festival today? What a glorious day it was 🙂
EGT @ 2121
Just as it will probably be a conservative government that achieves the republic.
At least with Turnbull we are starting to get away from that ruling in/ ruling out straitjacket that really started with Rudd (ruling the GST out of the Henry Review), Julia Gillard got minced by and Abbott took to new heights.
blackburnpseph
On the Sky News’ panels she often appears on she is “the voice of reason’. Which says something about the channel I suppose.
Pegasus
No Whitehorse Spring Festival for me – other things to do. A perfect day in Melbourne for sure.
Sam Dastyari is at least in parliament…
The whole thing seems a bit desperate and shabby. Now that Abbott has gone, at least there is the opportunity for higher standards.
Labor may be be thinking the Turnbott-Cayman connection could have the same destructive potential for the Libs as the Bishop-Chopper story.
The trouble with this line is that the public saw Bishop as playing with their money whereas they mostly will see Turnbott as playing with his own money.
Rusted-on Liberals most likely will think Turnbott has been very clever and deserves to be applauded for his financial ingenuity. Rusted-on Labor voters will take Turnbott’s tax planning as more evidence that they and he do not inhabit the same country; that there are at least Australias – one for the ultra-rich and one for the rest.
The disengaged have probably hardly noticed or could really care less…on the self-fulfilling assumption that “all politicians are just the same…”
.. at least 2 Australias…
briefly, 2128
[ The trouble with this line is that the public saw Bishop as playing with their money whereas they mostly will see Turnbott as playing with his own money. ]
I think this nailed it
Poroti
She has a North American accent. There seems to be something in Oz that women with a North American accent seem to be taken more seriously than others – Mrs Pseph and I have discussed this often. From our experience it seems to get them further in the workplace as well. KKK was always telegenic – but not much more.
Labor seem to think they can picture Turnbull as some sort of Mobutu or Mugabe parking their ill gotten gains in a Swiss or Cayman Island bank account. Give us a break – the man isn’t stupid – and he has come up with perfectly plausible responses. Did the NZ Labour Party throw around similar things about John Key? The worst outcome is that it will discourage even more people from pursuing a political career.
briefly @ 2128
Spot on!
Diog
[ I agree there is a potential conflict of interest but the same argument could be made about and PM and tax rates/tax deductions/super/trusts/negative gearing/allowances for politicians/rules for policing allowances/etc etc. ]
Transparency is the key here. Yes, a PM is entitled to benefit from changes that will also clearly benefit the electorate. But hiding your assets offshore in a manner that no-one knows the impacts of any legislation changes you might make is obviously wrong.
[ At least with Turnbull we are starting to get away from that ruling in/ ruling out straitjacket ]
Just because they are not saying ‘rule in/ rule out’ doesn’t mean they don’t intend to do exactly that – we just don’t know.
What has been ruled in very early in the piece is to look at reducing wages by decreasing Sunday pay.
Thats not a good sign.
Not unexpected but if thats the extent of their ‘vision’ its all a disappointing exercise.
So far what we have seen is less talk about what they really what to do. The old message still coming from morrison that spending needs to be cut.
Business and higher wage earners want tax cuts, plus to retain tax concessions/ loopholes etc etc – and that combination is what is unsustainable. Bleeding of tax income from higher earners/big business and almost zero tax in some cases with MNC’s are the issues are.
So far the tories have addressed this by cutting staff and resources and the capacity of the Tax Office to do its job.
That tells you most of what you need to know.
Nothing yet to indicate morrison is willing or able to undertake fundamental reform of taxation and related issues.
He is still a snake oil salesman IMO – even more waffle the the “the Member for Net Worth”.
blackburnpseph
I ( sadly ? ) have a bias against the NA accent but she still comes across may more reasonable than their usual panellists. Being from the Wild Wild West what she actually did or did not do in NSW is “buggered if I know”.
blackburnpseph
The festival was one of the better ones.
Interestingly, in addition to there being stalls for the three major political parties, the Animal Justice Party was also present for the first time. It will be standing candidates in all electorates if I heard correctly during my long discussion with the Chisholm candidate.
I just missed Anna Burke at the ALP stall. I wanted to ask her why she has been so quiet publicly about the sexual abuse, rape…on Nauru and Manus. Not heard a peep from her…maybe she has been told to ‘shut up’.
Given past history and Fairfax connection, Ipsos will be 63/42 to the Libs.
TPOF: MT’s wealth and where he chooses to invest it is not a matter of criminality or any alleged conflict of interest. Therefore, Labor’s raising the matter is a smear in anybody’s language. You and some others on here seem to see it as a legitimate tactic. But you are not really seem to be denying it is a smear.
The stuff about JG alleged that she knowingly witnessed a false declaration, which is undoubtedly a crime, albeit a relatively minor one (not to mention ancient history). I thought that it was disgusting for the Libs under Abbott to attack JG about this stuff (albeit seemingly following the lead of Robert McLelland on the matter).
What Labor is doing now is no better IMO. And, I suspect, far less effective politically.
Unless, as I said, they’ve got something other than smear. In which case, let’s see it.
Rees had arrested the decline in the NSW ALP`s polling under the latter part of the Iemma Government but this decline restarted under Kennealy.
50/50 from Ipsos would not surprise me.
If Ipsos does indeed shift both Turnbull and the party’s way, it will be proof positive – as if it were needed – that the Caymans strategy is dumb and desperate.
It’s virtually the raising of the white flag by Shorten.
He’s saying this is the best they’ve got to undermine Turnbull – and it’s bloody awful.
blackburnpseph@2132
He didn’t show too much smarts with utegate and he still has a divided party and problems all around him.
This time it may turn out different, but lets see some meaningful results first
There you go. Ipsos 54/46.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/dog-days-for-labor-as-coalition-surges-under-malcolm-turnbull-20151018-gkbx59.html
53% to 47% to the Coalition in the Ipsos Poll:
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/dog-days-for-labor-as-coalition-surges-under-malcolm-turnbull-20151018-gkbx59.html
Any further comment would be superfluous.
alias
[ If Ipsos does indeed shift both Turnbull and the party’s way, it will be proof positive – as if it were needed – that the Caymans strategy is dumb and desperate. ]
That’s just ridiculous.
P1,
You’re right. Labor’s vote would have been much weaker if not for the personal attack on Turnbull’s wealth.
If the votes are the same as the 2013 election (smh) then it must be very tempting for Turnbull to go to an early election before the fur hits the fan and voters realise he really is just a pleasant manner in a better suit.
MB
At the beginning of a trial opposing lawyers will work out what facts they agree on. That is not the endgame. Labor and Malcolm agree that he has a lot of money and that he uses legal means to minimise his tax. Just because they agree on that does not mean that it is a loss for Labor. Malcolm’s wealth and tax arrangements are now part of any tax discussion that he has.