BludgerTrack: 54.5-45.5 to Coalition

A particularly strong result from ReachTEL further drives up the Coalition’s lead in this week’s poll aggregate reading, which even puts the Coalition ahead on the seat projection in Victoria.

The BludgerTrack poll aggregate has been yo-yoing from one week to the next recently, and this week it’s the turn of an upswing for the Coalition, whose lead blows out nearly a full point to 54.5-45.5 on the back of a strong result in the ReachTEL poll conducted late last week. However, this only translates into a single gain on the seat projection – in Victoria, where the Coalition is now credited with more seats than Labor for the first time in living memory. Nothing new this week on leadership ratings.

Also:

• Sean Nicholls of the Sydney Morning Herald reports that Australian Workers Union official Misha Zelinsky has abandoned a plan to challenge the Labor preselection of Sharon Bird, member for the Illawarra region seat of Cunningham. The report says Bird had been imperilled by the recently published draft redistribution, which moved into the electorate branches controlled by state Wollongong MP Noreen Hay, a foe of Bird’s. Zelinsky was reportedly persuaded to withdraw by the party’s state secretary, Jamie Clements, acting on the urging of Bill Shorten.

• I had a piece in Crikey today on Labor’s developing preselection imbroglio in the inner northern Melbourne seat of Wills, which will be vacated at the next election by the retirement of Kelvin Thomson. Below is a graphic I prepared for the piece that didn’t get a run.

2015-12-02 wills votes and demographics

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.

2,375 comments on “BludgerTrack: 54.5-45.5 to Coalition”

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  1. Victoria @ 42

    I think Finnigans might be on to something.

    Maybe Turncoat is waiting for Godwin Grech to provide the documentary evidence before he takes action on Brough.

  3. [There is an immense difference between religious education (of which there is little in Australia’s Catholic schools) and religious indoctrination. No school that receives government funding should be doing religious indoctrination. A genuinely religious education would teach the values and histories of a variety of religions – emphasis on the plural – and would not just give an uncritical recital of one interpretation of one religion’s content.]

    They should obviously be indoctrinating the Gospel of St Nicholas to the Bludgers, the one and only true Gospel of truth and understanding, all others being of evil and error.

  5. confessions

    At the very least they will suggest it was a “failure” of the management to not arm the staff. What with them working with all those “unstable people” and all.

  6. A good round up of who to ignore at COP21. I’d forgotten about Monckton, but he’s still out there poisoning the well.
    http://magazine.good.is/articles/who-to-ignore-cop-21-climate-deniers

    Also includes the head of the ironically named Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow who devotes his time to claiming the link between GHG emitting industries and AGW is a sham.

    Obviously not very constructive if you aren’t prepared to even entertain the idea that the universally accepted theory of AGW is actually very real.

  7. Nicholas

    [(of which there is little in Australia’s Catholic schools)]

    This simply demonstrates your ignorance.

    Every Catholic school I know of has a huge emphasis on religious education. What’s more, they do a very good job.

    I had a short stint as a religious education teacher (I told them I was an atheist, they had no problems). This included a compulsory day long excursion to Melbourne where students visited a synagogue, a Mosque, a Buddhist temple and the Holocaust centre. At each venue, someone representing the organisation explained their beliefs.

    Every Catholic school I know of also has weekly religious services (compulsory), and religious education classes (at least three periods a week, compulsory subject even for VCE students).

  9. poroti:

    I can’t watch the commentary resulting from these things because I get so angry at the gun lobby and its apologists. These mass shootings are so unnecessary.

  10. OK Bludgers. Quick survey

    How many of you share WWP’s apparent view that Lisa Singh isn’t “high-performing” when considered vis-a-vis Sharon Bird?

  13. Boerwar

    [The Sherriff is claiming that he does not know whether this is a terrorist incident.]

    He won’t know until he finds out the ethnicity and or religion of the gunmen.

    Swarthy, been anywhere near the ME and or Muslim – Terrorist attack .
    White Septic- Unbalanced individuals in a random act of violence.

  15. Re the shooting. It’s in the nature of these sorts of events that witnesses might think there were multiple shooters when there was in fact only one.

    My money at this stage would still be on a deranged lone gunman rather than an organised terrorist attack.

    If it is a terrorist attack, there seem to be two potential scenarios: (a) neo-nazis targeting people with intellectual disabilities; or (b) as the place was apparently also a conference facility, perhaps there was some sort of Jewish function going on there and the terrorists were therefore Islamists of some variety or another. (But I reckon this is the most unlikely scenario: San Bernadino is LA’s equivalent to Dandenong or Emu Plains. Terrorists tend to target somewhere a bit more central.)

  17. From Latika Bourke:

    [Well Facebookers I have some news to share with you. I’m leaving the Press Gallery and moving to London at the end of January which is as exciting as it is daunting.

    Very excited to be broadening my horizons after seven years in Canberra reporting on the heady time that has been Australian politics but a little sad to be leaving all the wonderful (but I know lasting) friends I’ve made here.

    But of course we’ll all stay in touch through here, on Twitter and Instagram and hopefully you’ll be just as interested in my next adventure.]

  19. confessions
    Because the Nazis as were took to murdering significant numbers of people with disabilities for the purposes of racial purification.

  22. [How many of you share WWP’s apparent view that Lisa Singh isn’t “high-performing” when considered vis-a-vis Sharon Bird?]

    I don’t even know Sharon, and sorry I was asking a real question about Singh she may well be a brilliant performer, I just heard her on a bad day or on a subject she was ill prepared to discuss.

    Sorry if I came off sarcastic but I really know very little of lisa.

  23. Important decision of the High Court yesterday (Fair Work Ombudsman v Quest South Perth Holdings Pty Ltd) giving teeth to the section of the Fair Work Act which prohibits employers telling employees that the employees are now independent contractors.

    Pretty oddly lower courts had said it was ok, under the Act, for employers to tell employees that they were now independent contractors of third parties.

    The High Court squashed that 5-0.

  25. No we won’t Latika. I deleted you from my twitter feed, because oddly enough, I really was NOT interested in what you had for breakfast.

    You tweets were the reason why so many regard tweeters as twits.

  26. So again if anyone can tell me how / when / why Singh is a high performer I’d love to know.

    I’m not talking comparison to the other person who I’m assuming as a loyal Shorten dud. Loyal Dud being the most desired candidates for Labor in WA.

  27. [Because the Nazis as were took to murdering significant numbers of people with disabilities for the purposes of racial purification.]

    I forget there are still people around today who actually take that stuff seriously.

  28. Penny Wong

    [Govt moving to bring on Greens/Coalition dirty deal to shield multinationals from tax transparency #senate]

    Any green got a view in this?

    I’m guessing this transparency measure was worse than no transparency at all.

    Perhaps the green membership has Cayman invests too.

    *shakes head*

  31. “@AuSenate: For clarification: Sen Fifield has moved to rearrange today’s #Senate business. Sen Wong is seeking to move an amendment to the motion”

  32. Once a year I donate my talents to a rural Rotary Club. At one gathering one fellow started on a little teacher bashing, until someone pointed out all the office bearers of the club were either retired or practicing teachers as was the organiser of the one major fund raising event (a truly mammoth job). That seemed to put an end to the teacher bashing.

    I guess, teachers have unique skill sets, managing people(often under hostile circumstances), organisational skills and because of lack of resources a preparedness to roll up the sleeves to get things done.

  34. MB @ 60

    [How many of you share WWP’s apparent view that Lisa Singh isn’t “high-performing” when considered vis-a-vis Sharon Bird?]

    The question may be better put: How many of you are concerned about the notorious Noreen Hay’s machine starting to move into Federal electorate territory?

    Put another way, you are comparing two different situations. Personally, I regret Lisa Singh not getting a guernsey. But that had more to do with the fact that she had not aligned herself with a faction that was divvying up the spoils. Horrible, but less offensive than the WA left giving away top spot on the Labor ticket to Joe Bullock.

    With Sharon Bird, the move against her is all about a Labor power broker who has attracted a huge amount of unsavoury attention actually attempting to expand her power by moving in on a sitting member.

    Personally, I don’t know much about the performance of either Singh or Bird. But, in my opinion, letting Noreen Hay get any more personal influence and power is a far greater evil than the deal making among factions, which has been going on forever, that leaves worthy non-aligned people out in the cold.

    One other point. There is a difference between Senate and Reps pre-selection. When a sitting Senator is placed in a more vulnerable situation the public blow-back and ongoing grief is much less, unless the Senator is very high profile – as was the case a few years back with Penny Wong being relegated down the list. Voters vote for a slate of tickets – usually above the line and without taking into account the order of the candidates for the Party ticket.

    However, every time a sitting Reps member is pushed aside for someone else, it is highly obvious that there are hi-jinks at play and it is obvious to a significant proportion of voters that their votes are taken for granted. That the party internal games takes precedence over who would be the best representative for the electorate can be played by other parties at the election and could make the difference. It could also reverberate to other electorates. On the Reps ballot, you don’t vote for the Party; you vote for the person who represents that party. When the name of the representative candidate changes because of backroom argy-bargy voters are more likely to notice.

    So, even if Lisa Singh is a bigger loss to the Parliamentary Labor Party than Sharon Bird, the political implications of dumping Bird for some other Labor apparatchik are far more serious. And, therefore, the need for national leader intervention that much greater.

  38. I’m not a school teacher and have no particular close connection to any school teachers. But anyone who thinks that teachers have it easy have rocks in their heads. Personally, I could not think of anything I would like to do less than front up to a room full of kids knowing that a significant number may well not have the slightest interest in learning and some of them will go out of their way to get attention by ruining it for everyone else.

    Good teachers need to have a vocation and a talent for teaching and education. To be uplifted more by the successes than depressed by the failures every day. I have no truck with anyone who thinks that teachers typically have it easy.

  39. From the Grauniad:
    “The Labor leader is wrapping up now, with a touch of sarcasm and a touch of self deprecation.

    Mr Speaker, predictions and assumptions in politics can be a fraught business. If you had told me in January that by December we would have a new treasurer, a new speaker and a new prime minister, I’d have been rapt .. but I had an election in mind!

    There is a long way to go and a lot more to happen in the months ahead of us. So with that in mind, I want to wish the prime minister a restful and happy Christmas with Lucy and the family.

    As long as the truffles are up to standard, it’s never been a more exciting time to be Malcolm Turnbull!”

  40. [Why is Noreen Hay still in the ALP?]

    Bloody good question. Power and influence – and staying cleaner than Obeid, MacDonald and Roozendahl can be the only answer.

  42. Senator Heffernan just called an opposition senator a boofhead, and I heard “lickspittle” in there somewhere. At the suggestion that such language is unparliamentary, Brandis responded that Heffernan’s contribution was “robust”.

  43. WWP @ 776

    [I’m assuming as a loyal Shorten dud]

    I have no idea. But the assumption on which I posted at 84 is that whether Bird is a Shorten loyalist or somewhere else, seeing her pushed out of her seat by some apparatchik from another faction is dangerous.

    Shorten’s leadership of the Labor Party going forward is going to depend far more on Labor going into the next election united and speaking with one voice than on shoring up his personal support base.

  45. WeWantPaul @ 78

    No Greens investments in the Caymans. Or investments anywhere really…

    The government was about to walk away from its own bill so the Greens reached some compromised amendment to get, as you said some transparency being better than no transparency. Labor’s just pissed because they lost at playing “Deal or No Deal”

    From what I’ve been sent:

    The Bill requires multinational companies (global revenue over $1bn) to provide financial reports and documentation on a country-by-country basis. This was originanlly supposed to be $100 million but had to be increased to get the Libs acroos.

    The ATO can now add multinationals to the types of companies it can pursue under the existing General Anti Avoidance provisions so that if a company has entered into a transaction for the purpose of avoiding tax, the ATO will now be able to prosecute them.

    Maximum penalties for multinationals that avoid taxation in Australia are also doubled in some instances.

    The government’s ‘kidnap laws’ are also partially wound back with disclosure now at $200m a year.

  46. More importantly –

    William are the polling booth numbers on your images round the wrong way? Surely the Greens aren’t polling 73% in Glenroy

  47. First the electricity suppliers and distributors insisted the grid be “gold-plated” … and gullible consumers paid for it.

    It now seems they won’t stop until the grid is “platinum-plated” … and again, gullible consumers will pay for it:

    [ http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-03/electricity-networks-need-up-to-$1-trillion-of-investment-ena/6996200 ]

    It is easy to understand why Australia has just about the most expensive electricity in the world.

    It’s because we’re stupid.

  49. First the electricity suppliers and distributors insisted the grid be “gold-plated” … and gullible consumers paid for it.

    It now seems they won’t stop until the grid is “platinum-plated” … and again, gullible consumers will pay for it:

    [ http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-03/electricity-networks-need-up-to-$1-trillion-of-investment-ena/6996200 ]

    It is easy to understand why Australia has just about the most expensive electricity in the world.

    It’s because we’re stupid.

  50. Yep, Greens do a deal with the government and it’s justified here as pragmatic and necessary; Labor does the same kind of deal, on the same grounds, and it’s a sell out, there’s no difference between the two parties, Labor has no spine, yadayadayada…

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