The only new poll this week was the regular result from Essential Research, but it was enough to contribute to another sizeable cut in the Coalition two-party lead for the fifth week in a row. Sharp-eyed observers will note that the state seat tallies now account for redistribution changes, which have added a seat in Western Australia and removed one in New South Wales. These changes have seen the abolition of a Labor-held seat in the Hunter region of New South Wales, and the creation of the notionally Liberal seat of Burt in Perth. However, the overall effect is favourable to Labor since three seats in New South Wales – Barton, Paterson and Dobell – have become notionally Labor on the new boundaries, with respective margins of 5.2%, 1.3% and 0.4%. The swing currently being in Labor’s favour, the model rates them a certainty in Barton and better than evens in Paterson and Dobell, and more likely than not to win to win Burt.
The upshot of all this is that BludgerTrack has the Coalition down three seats this week in New South Wales and steady everywhere else, whereas Labor is credited with two gains in New South Wales and one in Western Australia. Note that the national and state-level figures on the chart showing seat change since 2013 will no longer align, since the baseline for the national result is as per the election (Coalition 90, Labor 55), whereas those for the state numbers are post-redistribution (Coalition 27, Labor 20 in New South Wales; Coalition 13, Labor 3 in Western Australia). The post-redistribution margins are as determined by myself, following very similar methodology to Antony Green. A full accounting of the calculations can be found here for New South Wales, and here for Western Australia.
Other news:
• A ReachTEL poll of 712 respondents in New England, “obtained by Guardian Australia” (who commissioned it is not clear), suggests Barnaby Joyce would have a very serious fight on his hands if former member Tony Windsor sought to run again as an independent, which he is neithe ruling in or out. The numbers cited are 39.5% for Joyce, 32.2% for Windsor, 11.2% for Labor and 4.6% for the Greens, with 5.1% undecided.
• The mass exodus of Labor’s Western Australian federal MPs continued this week, with Senator Joe Bullock announcing his decision to retire in protest over the party’s support for same-sex marriage. Bill Shorten promptly announced that Bullock’s vacancy would be filled by Pat Dodson, a leader of the Yawuru people from Broome and former chair of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. This scotched the ambitions of Louise Pratt, who was famously relegated to second position on the Labor ticket behind Bullock, then defeated at the April 2014 Senate election re-run following a collapse in Labor support. Many attributed this outcome to derogatory comments Bullock made about Pratt while speaking at a Christian function, which became public the day before the election.
• Labor has another indigenous parliamentarian lined up in the form of Linda Burney, who has held the seat of Canterbury in the New South Wales state parliament in 2003, and served as Deputy Opposition Leader since the defeat of 2011. Burney is running for preselection in Barton, which encompasses about half of her current electorate. The seat is currently held for the Liberals by Nick Varvaris, but Labor has been heavily favoured in the redistribution, which adds inner city territory around Marrickville and removes Liberal-voting Sans Souci. Burney has resigned as member for Canterbury to contest the preselection, which will result in a by-election.
• Mal Brough’s announcement that he will not seek another term has opened a Liberal National Party vacancy in his Sunshine Coast seat of Fisher. The party’s state executive had been withholding endorsement of Brough’s preselection pending the outcome of an Australian Federal Police investigation into his role in the leaking the diary of Peter Slipper, the then Speaker and his predecessor as member for Fisher. It was promptly suggested that Jarrod Bleijie, the controversial Newman government Attorney-General and member for the local electorate of Kawana, might be interested in the seat, but he has since ruled himself out. Amy Remeikis of Fairfax reports the seat might be of interest to James McGrath, who ran against Brough for the preselection in 2013 and has since found a place in the Senate.
I said a few times that the end of febuary would be a good measure of the status quo since that is roughly when the honeymoon and the boost from terrorist attacks would wear off for the coalition.
It will be interesting to see when the polls stabilize. I think it will be close
[I’d really like to see BIS Shrapnel’s report. Better still, I would like to see rigorous modelling undertaken by NATSEM, which is easily the premier economic modelling unit in Australia (in my view, slightly better these days than Treasury’s own internal unit).
I am extremely disappointed that Labor did not prepare their policy in conjunction with commissioning modelling from NATSEM. Nobody could possibly accuse NATSEM of being a right-wing outfit. But they are rigorous and committed to the truth. Any policy designed to restrict negative gearing would be much, much better as a result of their input. Instead, Labor turned to opinionated talking heads like John Daly.]
Disagree with nothing in this.
Re Donald Trump. I have been looking into his views on various subjects: some loopy, some kind of reasonable, all rather populist.
However, one interesting thing I have gleaned is that he shares with Bernie Sanders a very moderate position on Israel, which harks back to the 1990s views of old George Bush and Bill Clinton (before the assassination of Rabin stymied the latter’s peace process).
Trump and Sanders – unlike George W Bush, Kerry, Obama, Hillary, Romney, Cruz, Rubio and the rest – don’t see that there is only one side in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Trump has talked openly about peace processes and about how he isn’t prepared to demonise the Palestinians.
Some of the extreme negativity towards Trump coming from the GOP establishment and the more conservative elements of the US media has to be understood in this context. The majority of the Jewish community of the US – of which many members are business leaders and, most importantly, the owners of media outlets – seems to be increasingly opposed to any idea of a peace process in the Middle East as it might bring into existence their greatest fear: a multicultural nation in which the right of return is compromised or, at least, diminished in force.
It’s a fairytale political position of course. If a Hitler-type figure were to emerge suddenly in the US and take power, there is really no way that Israel could realistically provide more than a very temporary refuge to 6-10 million returnees from the US.
But fairytales about homelands can be extremely powerful in the minds of exiled communities. So there is a strong element of the establishment in the US that will not allow the US to move more than an inch away from Netanyahu’s current position. And that’s why Obama has been disappointingly pissweak about the Israel-Palestine issue (and that’s coming from me who, since the departure of Psephos, is probably the most pro-Israel poster on PB).
But Trump is not dependent on campaign funds from big business or the Israel lobby, so he can say what he likes.
He’s still a complete ratbag, but I thought this was an interesting perspective.
[10 / 10 for the AFR for digging behind the film flam folly which is the BIS report. The repetitional damage is huge https://t.co/TfK3DgybP2. ]
From the kouk.
political_alert: Shadow Treasurer, Chris Bowen, will hold a doorstop at 10:45am, Parliament House #auspol
[ What is ssooooo delicious, is that for all Abbott’s attacks on Gillard Govt as being in chaos (a perception for which he was partly if not mostly responsible for)]
Notice though that Abbott as LOTO pretty much spent ALL his time attacking, trying to obstruct and stirring. No policy at all.
Shorten as LOTO is doing none of that. Oh, he’s getting the comments and zingers in, but he seems to be spending most of his time NOT commenting on Libs dysfunction. A lot of policy stuff.
Whats coming across is that the aLP are being a much more constructive opposition than the Libs.
[It will be interesting to see when the polls stabilize. I think it will be close]
Serious question Graham; why, apart from buying into the Turnbull is the Messiah narrative, would the polls stabilize soon so that it’s ‘close’?
It’s possible of course. But this is a do-nothing government that has just ensured it won’t get another contentious bill through the parliament, riven by infighting led by a deposed PM with anger management issues, without a policy to bless themselves with and led by a myth who is widely hated by his own party and has disappointed those outside that had impossible expectations of him.
In situations like this you are using wondering where the rock bottom of their support is.
Spending money on 12 submarines seeming pointless now?
All we accomplished by this was forcing China to spend more money on their military, and thus have less money to prop up their (and thus our) economy.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-03/china-expected-to-announce-rise-in-military-budget/7215480
WWP@104: the AFR didn’t do much digging, they simply quoted John Daly’s comments. Which, as is usual with Daly, don’t seem to be based on much more than assertions. He claims that the extent to which house prices would fall would be equivalent in dollar terms to the value of the tax benefit withdrawn.
That might be right or it might be wrong, but I’d like to see what BIS Shrapnel’s assumptions were. It’s not uncommon for a government subsidy to have a multiplier effect: ever government of either stripe that has ever subsidised any industry has done so on the basis of that assumption. So the withdrawal of a subsidy could also conceivably have a negative multiplier effect: especially if, as we have been told a lot by the proponents of taking negative gearing away, that there is currently a “bubble” in the housing market.
‘ I notice that John Daly from the so-called think tank the Grattan Institute has been mouthing off at it this morning. Daly is not any sort of an economist, let alone an economic modeller, and surely there hasn’t been enough time for his institute to do a rigorous assessment of BIS Shrapnel’s work.’
meher baba, I hardly think John Daley is just some sort of talking head or unqualified commentator.
Scott Bales
Arms races have that effect. T’was ever thus.
The issues are:
1. which is chicken, which is egg
2. how do we all get off the merry go round.
Yep, were’s this report we hear so much about. It seems pretty obvious none of the media commenting on it have seen it let alone analysed it.
@ ratsak – don’t get your hopes up for a Labor whitewash. The last time a Federal government was kicked out after 1 term was the Great Depression.
Even a close win for Labor would be an incredible result.
Pell is arguing that he was the dynamic anti-paedophile Archbishop.
But that before that he knew and did virtually nothing about paedophiles.
[10.WWP@104: the AFR didn’t do much digging, they simply quoted John Daly’s comments. Which, as is usual with Daly, don’t seem to be based on much more than assertions. He claims that the extent to which house prices would fall would be equivalent in dollar terms to the value of the tax benefit withdrawn.]
I think MB it is clear where you are coming from.
I’ll go with the AFR and the Kouk in the interim.
Meher
You are spot on about Trump and Israel/Palestine, but it is a little more than that. Trump seems to be an old style 1930s isolationist, not wanting to prop up NATO or Japan either.
Hard though it seems to believe, if you want world peace Trump may be the preferred POTUS. Not so good if you are black or hispanic.
Bolt, having somewhat resiled from his earlier very critical views, is now arguing that there was a virtual conspiracy to keep Pell in the dark because Pell was a conservative.
meher baba,
In fact, I would go so far as to say that John Daley has way more qualifications which enable him to comment on the Negative Gearing issue than you ever will.
Boerwar @ 82
The wood ducks grazing seem to have been replaced by rabbits 🙁
The ducks used to roost on a fallen trunk that we deliberately left to lie across one end of the dam. I suspect the lack of breeding is from the loss of nesting hollows around me. The chainsaws are in use every weekend.
Scott,
Has their ever been a more farcical first term government? The rules are their to be broken and both the last two first termers went damn close to losing. Neither was anywhere near as big a joke as this mob.
And I’m not saying I expect a massacre at the actual election. It is quite conceivable that ‘teh tightening’ brings the Libs back up. I’m merely saying their polling is more likely to be heading much further south than stabilising in next two months or so. 45s would be no surprise at all and for their performance still grossly generous.
Labor will win but >80 seats would probably be unlikely (sophomore hanging on a few very tight seats). 75+ will be more than enough though.
Scott Bales @ 113,
Except it very nearly happened in 2010. Times are different now I think.
there not their! Damn I am always doing that 🙁
lizzie
Good call on the chainsaws and hollows, IMO.
ratsak@107: “It’s possible of course. But this is a do-nothing government that has just ensured it won’t get another contentious bill through the parliament, riven by infighting led by a deposed PM with anger management issues, without a policy to bless themselves with and led by a myth who is widely hated by his own party and has disappointed those outside that had impossible expectations of him. In situations like this you are using wondering where the rock bottom of their support is.”
It is an unfortunate, mostly demographic, fact that the rock bottom of the Coalition’s 2PP support at the Federal level seems to be in the range of 47-48%.
This means that they are always a strong chance to win any Federal election if they can present a unified front. In 1987 they had no chance thanks to the undermining of the Joh for Canberra campaign. In 1983 they had no chance once Hawke had replaced Hayden, but I reckon they were still in which a show up to then (I don’t subscribe to the “drover’s dog” theory). In 2007, one felt that Rudd and Labor had to battle harder to win than Hawke did in 1983: and the TPP was less than 53-47.
It’s always hard for Labor to win at the Federal level in Australia. I reckon the Coalition still remain a strong chance, but they will have to get their act together quickly.
I don’t think Abbott will be much of a factor for much longer as I understand he is about to be massively clobbered by Niki Savva’s book.
lizzie
The rabbits might be competing, or they might be helping to keep the grass short and grazable for the ducks.
I don’t know.
Chris Bowen presser not being covered on ABC24. Just more Pell. 🙁
Tom
[The BIS report is probably in relation to the Robert Ludlum/Greens policy of abolishing Negative Gearing in its entirety. Which I believe was the Green’s policy until they released a new policy on the 16th Feb this year. But only after the ALP released it’s policy.]
Please provide an independent link to support your claim about a revised Greens NG policy being released after 16 Feb 2016.
http://greens.org.au/node/11315
[Sunday, Jun 7th, 2015
The Australian Greens have today announced a policy package to reform negative gearing and use the proceeds to boost affordable housing, building more than 14,500 new homes for our most vulnerable.]
Full policy with modelling done by PBO: http://scott-ludlam.greensmps.org.au/campaigns/reforming-negative-gearing
Murph in the Grauniad:
[Word around the building is the prime minister isn’t sold on the idea of going to a double dissolution election, despite all the groundwork the government is putting in to set one up.]
Stick a fork in him. He’s painted himself in a corner again.
All the pre-work to make it seem a GST was inevitable…
Malcolm loses his bottle and takes it off the table. Cops voter backlash because he’s seen as weak and indecisive.
All the pre-work to make it seem a DD is inevitable…
If he goes to water on that he won’t need to worry about a voter backlash. The second Abbott government might just get a chance to prove it is better than the first.
[Except it very nearly happened in 2010. Times are different now I think.]
The extremes of Rudd hate let the coalition talk about the current situation as if it is almost as bad as Rudd / Gillard. Of course while Turnbulls rating was high what Abbott did was irrelevant, but now the polling had tightened you have team Abbott both leaking and running a public campaign. It is much much worse in all respects but the polling.
ratsak @ 128
A genius for self-wedgification?
a lot of the discussion on Labor negative gearing on talk back radio seems to forget that the policy is not retrospective.
[It is an unfortunate, mostly demographic, fact that the rock bottom of the Coalition’s 2PP support at the Federal level seems to be in the range of 47-48%.]
It might be come election time. Not disputing that because that’s were it usually lands when Labor does win.
But they can poll a lot lower as Howard showed in 07 and Turnbull definitely proved when he was LOTO. So I say again. I’m not making statements that they are going to get 47 on election day. Just that their polling numbers will very likely drop below that in the coming months.
They’re just far too locked into stoopid and leaderless for it not to happen against a disciplined and policy driven opposition that isn’t scary.
[A genius for self-wedgification?]
Could write the textbook.
Dynamic ant-peadophile Archbishop – NOT
‘When he was archbishop of Melbourne, Pell did introduce far-reaching reforms with the Melbourne Response, which brought independent investigation of complaints, provision for compensation (with an upper limit of $50,000, later raised to $75,000), and support and counselling. It provided a mechanism to help victims whose abusers were dead, or who didn’t want to go to police
But he did so under pressure from premier Jeff Kennett, who summoned him to say “if you don’t clean it up I will”, which would have brought a loss of control the church could not countenance.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/the-man-in-the-big-chair-20130526-2n50u.html#ixzz41nFKeiur
He only acted because, if not, Kennet would have done something!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/03/02/children-detention-australia_n_9369546.html?utm_hp_ref=au-politics
[Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young has introduced a bill into parliament that would ban the holding of children in immigration detention centres.
The so-called “Free The Children” bill, to amend the Migration Act 1958, was introduced into the Senate on Wednesday afternoon.
This Bill seeks to provide that children detained… not be held in immigration detention facilities but instead be placed, along with their immediate family members or guardians, in community residential housing for any requisite period of detention,” the bill’s explanatory memorandum outlined.]
Don’t cry for me, Nathan Tinkler
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/business/cbd/nathan-tinkler-has-officially-been-declared-bankrupt-20160302-gn94ss.html
[Chris Bowen presser not being covered on ABC24. Just more Pell. 🙁 ]
best bit was when Bowen said the PM needs to ‘grow up’
I am questioning how long will it be before Morrison does another “Box Hill” tax policy speech
PeeBee
Kicking and screaming to the bitter end.
Mr Tinkler now has some sort of presence in Singapore and may not be entirely bereft of resources.
[Michael Koziol
Michael Koziol – Verified account @michaelkoziol
Chris Bowen says BIS report has “as much credibility as an email from Godwin Grech” #zing #auspol
4:01 PM – 2 Mar 2016
4 RETWEETS]
Pell has been flitting from one solo of Catholic management to another either hiding behind them or dumping on them.
ratsak
[ Word around the building is the prime minister isn’t sold on the idea of going to a double dissolution election, despite all the groundwork the government is putting in to set one up. ]
As if the PM’s opinion (on anything) meant diddly-squat to this government.
The election timing will be determined by Murdoch and the IPA, not the PM. Expect it soon if their campaign against negative gearing changes gets any traction at all, otherwise not.
vic
That’s a cracker form Bowen!
Me at 142
I meant to type “silo”.
Labour’s 2PP vote has not reached 53% in any Federal election since World War 2.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_federal_elections#Primary.2C_TPP_and_seat_results_since_1937
P1
Yes exactly. They are testing the waters to see if they can run a BS campaign like the did with the carbon tax.
Remember facts don’t matter.
Its Liberal It lies. Include Murdoch media and IPA in that for political advantage.
BK
Certainly is a zinger by Bowen!
Wow so young!
guardian: Australian Olympic rower Sarah Tait dies aged 33 https://t.co/MOKUkMgFYp via @guardian_sport
Federal Politics
Federal Politics – Verified account @PoliticsFairfax
Scott Morrison under fire after report he used to attack Labor contained crucial errors, writes @michaelkoziol http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/scott-morrison-under-fire-after-bis-shrapnel-report-used-to-attack-labor-contained-crucial-errors-20160302-gn93kj.html …