The Coalition’s downward odyssey in the BludgerTrack poll aggregate enters its sixth week, although the movement on voting intention is slight this time, since all three pollsters this week (Newspoll, Roy Morgan and Essential) essentially repeated the results of their previous polls. Nonetheless, the 0.2% shift has been enough to bag Labor gains on the seat projection in New South Wales and Queensland. There is even more encouragement for Labor from the leadership ratings, on which Malcolm Turnbull is tanking rapidly, albeit that his head remains above the waterline in positive net approval. Bill Shorten’s trendlines are pointing northward, although he still has a very long way to go. Kevin Bonham had the following to say about the Newspoll leadership ratings, a day before they were corroborated by Essential Research:
Turnbull is still far more popular than Bill Shorten, but he’s dropped 35 points in the four polls taken since last November. This loss of 35 points in three and a half months is exceeded only by Paul Keating in 1993 (43 points in just over three months), John Howard in 1996 (36 points in six weeks) and Howard again in 2001 (38 points in six weeks). The 1996 Howard example comes with a big asterisk too, because Howard was falling from the career-high +53 netsat he had jumped 24 points to reach in the immediate aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre. It is not at all normal then for a PM to lose this much popularity this fast, but then again it is not that normal for them to have it in the first place.
Electoral matters:
• Phillip Coorey of the Financial Review sees the two possibilities as the much-touted July 2 double dissolution, or a normal election in mid-August, either of which would leave time for a same-sex marriage plebiscite to be held by the end of the year. He also relates that the government is “exploring the logistics” of bringing down the budget on May 3, rather than the scheduled date of May 10, which is one day before the deadline for calling a double dissolution expires. Among other things, this would allow the government time to attempt to get its legislation reinstating the powers of the Australian Building and Construction Commission through the Senate. Its reject would confirm its currently contestable status as a double dissolution trigger, which the Greens sought to retain by having the government agree not to reintroduce it during the current session as part of its deal to legislate for Senate electoral reform.
• Amid talk of a possible early state election, Queenslanders go to the polls next Saturday to vote on a referendum proposal that would render such a thing impossible, by introducing fixed four-year terms with elections set for the last week in October. The referendum has been timed to coincide with local government elections, which also means that the big partisan prize of the Brisbane lord mayoralty is up for grabs. According to a Galaxy poll of 540 voters conducted for the Nine Network, Liberal National Party incumbent Graham Quirk holds a 53-47 two-party lead over Labor’s Tim Harding. This compares with his winning margin of 68.3-31.7 at the 2012 election, which was held a few weeks after Anna Bligh’s government had been decimated at the polls. The Galaxy poll also found Brisbane voters favouring the referendum proposal by 48% to 35%, but Steven Wardill of the Courier-Mail, offers that “regional Queenslanders are expected to be much more sceptical towards the proposal”.
Preselection matters:
• The Liberal preselection to anoint a successor to Victorian Senator Michael Ronaldson has produced a surprise winner in James Paterson, the 28-year-old deputy executive director of the Institute of Public Affairs. Paterson will shortly fill the casual vacancy to be created by Ronaldson’s imminent retirement, and will head the party’s ticket in the event of a normal half-Senate election. It had been generally expected that the position would go to Jane Hume, a superannuation policy adviser who had the influential backing of Michael Kroger, president of the party’s state branch. Hume had earlier won preselection for the number three position on a Coalition ticket that allocates second place to the Nationals. Also in the race was Amanda Millar, who filled a casual vacancy for Northern Victoria region in the state upper house in August 2013 but failed to win re-election in November 2014; and Karina Okotel, a legal aid lawyer.
• Labor’s preselection in Fremantle will be conducted over two days on Sunday, when a ballot of local members determining 25% of the total result will be held, and Monday, when the rest is to be determined at a meeting of state executive. The two nominees are Josh Wilson, chief-of-staff to outgoing member Melissa Parke and the local deputy mayor, and Chris Brown, a Maritime Union of Australia organiser and former wharfie. Observers say that Wilson will dominate the local party ballot, but factional arrangements are likely to tip the balance in Brown’s favour at state executive. The winner will face recently preselected Greens candidate Kate Davis, solicitor for tenants’ rights organisation Tenancy WA.
• Tim Hammond has been preselected without opposition to succeed Alannah MacTiernan as Labor’s candidate in Perth. Hammond is a barrister specialising in representing asbestos disease victims, one of the party’s national vice-presidents, and a member of the Right. It appears that the Brand preselection will go the same way, with no other contenders standing in the way of Madeleine King, chief operating officer of the international policy think tank Perth USAsia Centre. Other confirmed Labor candidates in winnable seats are Matt Keogh in Burt, a commercial lawyer and president of the WA Law Society, who ran unsuccessfully at the Canning by-election in September; Anne Azza Aly in Cowan, a counter-terrorism expert at Curtin University and founder of People Against Violent Extremism (as seen here last week in Seat of the Week); Tammy Solonec in Swan, an indigenous lawyer; and Bill Leadbetter in Hasluck, executive director of an obstetric practice and occasional history academic. Aly and Solonec both have a past with the Greens, Aly having been endorsed as a candidate for the 2007 federal election before withdrawing from the race, and Solonec having held an unwinnable spot on an upper house ticket at the 2013 state election.
• The New South Wales Liberals are preparing to determine their Parramatta preselection through a trial plebiscite of local party members of more than two years’ standing. A push to make such ballots the norm was rejected at the party’s state conference in October, to the chagrin of the religious Right faction in particular, but a compromise deal backed by Mike Baird has allowed for trials to be held in a small number of federal and state electorates over the coming years. Kylie Adoranti of the Parramatta Advertiser reports 278 local members are eligible to participate, together with the members of the state executive and further representatives of the state council and the Prime Minister, collectively accounting for 28 votes. Nominees include current Parramatta councillor Jean Pierre Abood; former Parramatta councillor Andrew Bide; Charles Camenzuli, a structural engineer and building consultant who was the party’s candidate in 2010, and also sought preselection unsuccessfully in 2013; and Felicity Finlay, who also contested preselection in 2013, and appears to be a school teacher.
• Labor’s national executive has taken over the preselection process in the New South Wales seats of Barton and Hunter, initiating a process that will be resolved on Friday. The beneficiary in Barton will be the state’s outgoing Deputy Opposition Leader, Linda Burney. National executive will also determine her successor in the state seat of Canterbury, where a by-election now looms. In Hunter, Joel Fitzgibbon is to be confirmed as candidate for a seat that effectively merges his existing seat of Hunter with Charlton, which has been decommissioned in the redistribution. The intervention enforces a deal in which Hunter remains secure for the Right, who have been frozen out in Barton by the endorsement of the Left-aligned Burney.
• Labor in New South Wales also has normal preselection processes in train for ten other seats, including two in the Hunter region: Shortland, where Jill Hall is retiring, and Paterson, which the redistribution has transformed from Liberal to marginal Labor. Shortland looks set to be the new home for Pat Conroy, whose existing seat of Charlton has, as noted above, been rolled together with Joel Fitzgibbon’s seat of Hunter. Conroy says he insisted on facing a rank-and-file ballot. Nominees in Paterson include Meryl Swanson, a local radio presenter, and Robert Roseworne, decribed by the ABC as a “Port Stephens community campaigner”. Both preselections are scheduled to be resolved the weekend after next.
• Nationals MP John Cobb has announced he will not contest the next election, having been member for Parkes from 2001 to 2007, and Calare henceforth. The front-runner to succeed him as Nationals candidate in Calare appears to be Andrew Gee, member for the state seat of Orange, although media reports suggest opponents may include Wellington councillor Alison Conn, Bathurst businessman Sam Farraway, Orange councillor Scott Munro, Bathurst mayor Gary Rush, Lithgow councillor Peter Pilbeam and Bathurst region farmer Paul Blanch, who was the Liberal candidate in 2004.
CTar1
[ meher is treating -ve gearing as if it’s the single issue in the current political tussle and seems happy to push his opinion 24/7. ]
Negative gearing is the only issue that Mal (forced by Shorten) has come to any decision on – i.e. to oppose any change.
On other issues no-one has a clue which way the LNP will bounce, so they can’t campaign on it yet.
What an omnishambles!
Re Raaraa @22: The Daily Terrorgraph using its front page to scare New England voters off Windsor. Not sure how much effect the DT have in rural NSW.
The Daily Telecrap opned the article thus: “HIS actions in supporting Julia Gillard to retain government created a nightmarish scenario. Now, it’s feared former independent MP Tony Windsor will today announce a return from the political grave…”
Unfortunately, I can’t any more comment on the article (to the effect that the voters of New England don’t need to be told what to think) without registering with the Telecrap, which I won’t do.
As far as I can tell, free copies of the Daily Telecrap are available in every coffee shop (for the ‘latte set?) and every takeway franchise outlet across NSW.
Barnaby has a poster for ‘Mary Poppins’ on his office window.
How appropriate.
Did Barnaby Joyce just admit he voted for Windsor with we voted for Windsor?
Barnaby, the friend of the miners, will surely have problems in his campaign.
The “self hating lefties” and “self hating Jews” should get together and have a jolly good larf over the “self hating” moniker opponents use .
Steve777
[ The Daily Telecrap opned the article thus: “HIS actions in supporting Julia Gillard to retain government created a nightmarish scenario. Now, it’s feared former independent MP Tony Windsor will today announce a return from the political grave…” ]
I hope someone points out that Windows was right to support Gillard over Abbott. Look how poorly Abbott performed when he finally did manage to crawl into government (with a majority!) then try to imagine him in charge of a hung parliament.
Windsor was in fact very prescient!
Apologies if previously linked, but this is a fascinating article on Paul Sheehan’s journalistic standards:
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/mar/09/lessons-from-louise-the-story-of-paul-sheehan-and-the-sydney-morning-herald
[ … that Windows was … ]
D’oh … that Windsor was …
Guytaur, added to Uhlmann’s story is;
1. the factor of forced Council amalgamations in country areas.
2. Nuclear waste site in the Calare electorate.
In an ealier post I stated that Calare, although having a majority of 14.7, may become a lot closer for the ALP because of these matters. John Cobb has bred a LOT of hostility locally with his support for the waste dump, forced amalgamations and rabid stance against SSM. If ALP do not win it, it will certainly see the majority disapear.
Tom
SMH ‘war on negative gearing’ is also a stretch, how many tax enquiries have suggested limiting it, and also how many economists.
Greiner and Kennetts position on SSM shows it is a civil war in the Libs, many of those opposed are firmly against.
TPOF@41. Now there’s a funny thing. I really, really don’t agree with you. If I think something is morally wrong, I don’t do it, even if it’s perfectly legal.
Re neg gearing: I think it’s neither morally wrong nor morally right. My only concern is the potential impact of the law of unintended consequences re Labor’s proposed changes.
Personally, I got out of neg gearing when I realised that, however much I might get back through tax deductions, it’s not a very good value investment unless (as I never have been) you are lucky enough to buy at a market low and sell at a market high. Right now you have to borrow a really substantial amount of $$ to reduce your taxable income by a significant amount (perhaps $1.5 million to reduce your income by $40-50k. The people who have done this are going to be incredibly vulnerable if interest rates go up.
P1
[someone points out that Windows was right to]
Microsoft is never right.
😀
Ditto service stations.
Meher #27
” I suspect there’s a sort of self-hatred thing going on here: something I’ve often encountered with the latte left. It’s really easy, if you’re inclined to be cruel, to stir latte lefties up about why – as they almost inevitably do these days – to send their kids to a top private school. Because, deep down inside, they hate themselves for having done so.”
Is this just spell check altering the meaning of what Meher intended. Maybe spell check has been upgraded to “fix” whole paragraphs.
Surely no one is so silly and so presumptuous as to write this tosh. Or so naive.
Presumably if Windsor runs, he will be asked with whom he will align himself if there is another hung parliament.
https://newmatilda.com/2016/03/09/labor-credibibility-ends-as-trainwreck-blows-up-in-their-face/
[The first rule of political propaganda is ‘make it believable’. The second rule is if you can’t do that, at least make sure it’s hard to disprove.
Apparently, no-one over at Labor Party headquarters got that memo, because there’s no other possible way to explain the third grade stunt they tried to pull off overnight.
As Australians sauntered off to bed, an official ALP advertisement began doing the rounds on Facebook.
If you missed it, here it is:]
CTar1
[ Microsoft is never right. ]
Even their spelling correction program has it in for me! 🙂
[In an ealier post I stated that Calare, although having a majority of 14.7, may become a lot closer for the ALP because of these matters]
I was fortunate enough to live in Calare when the late great Peter Andren was the local member. He was a man of great integrity, and a progressive in most senses of the word. And the voters of Calare loved him.
“Independent journalism”
ABC24:
[Barnaby Joyce says he’s ready to put his record on the line if Tony Windsor runs for parliament]
Fair dinkum??? He’s got bugger all choice on that.
[Steve777
As far as I can tell, free copies of the Daily Telecrap are available in every coffee shop (for the ‘latte set?) and every takeway franchise outlet across NSW.]
It must cost Murdoch a fortune to ensure that his malignant messages are so widely available. It seems inconceivable that every fast food outlet and coffee shop would willingly pay for Murdoch’s rubbish, so he must be subsidising the distribution to a great extent.
The Oz seems to be distributed alongside the DT but several times I have seen perfectly folded copies of the Oz, that is, nobody reads it.
Funnily enough I used the word “Microsoft” yesterday in a submission I was writing.
The only spelling mistake in the entire document was the word “Microsoft” that I spelled (a typo) as “Miscrosoft”.
The funny bit it is that Microsoft Word’s spellchecker didn’t pick it up 🙂
There’s a moral to that story somewhere.
The people who have done this are going to be incredibly vulnerable if interest rates go up.
I think there could well be a time bomb there, independent of whether or not we change negative gearing. Should interest rates ever move back towards historical norms, let alone exceed them, while home prices remain at current levels in relation to incomes, there will be a very serious crisis with many investors and people paying off their homes being unable to service their debts. In fact, it could well be a disaster.
Apparently Jon English died of “an aneurysm”. Had been in hospital for a short while, had surgery but it didn’t work.
Didn’t say whether an aortic aneurysm or brain.
Poor bloke. He was only 66.
Adrian, yes Peter Andren was a good man. Taken too early by cancer.
Tom.
Patrickavenell: Carr talking about 3-month election campaign like the date is already set. Keeps saying “Shorten Labor Government” with eerie confidence.
Peg
That “New Matilda” article is a real cracker. First they raise the spectre of Paul Sheehan, and then demonstrate how they share his level of journalistic integrity.
The say that Labor ran an ad claiming De Natali would “never say never” to an alliance with the Liberal party, and that this means they have lost credibility. But then this …
[ Technically, that’s not a lie. At least, it’s not a Paul Sheehan-esque lie. Di Natale did sort of say that in the interview. ]
Actually, he said pretty much exactly that in the interview …
[ “In my view it’s much more likely that the opportunity rests with Labor, but you should never rule out any possibility, though it’s unlikely. ‘Never say never’ is the quote I’d use about everything in politics.” ]
Then, having demonstrated that Labor’s main point is in fact true, they again wander off-piste by demonstrating that the Greens do indeed vote with the government on occasion.
Paul Sheehan would have been proud!
ABCNews24: @AntonyGreenABC joined @joeobrien24 this morning to discuss federal politics and the looming election https://t.co/Bu2QW8dOjC
Re Citizen @72: It must cost Murdoch a fortune to ensure that his malignant messages are so widely available.
It has rather suggested to me that Newscorp newspapers are like religious tracts, to diseminate the Gospel according to Rupert, rather than media outlets that are meant to turn a profit. I suppose Rupert has what was until recently the Foxtel monopoly, plus online franchises, to generate profits.
citizen
[ It must cost Murdoch a fortune to ensure that his malignant messages are so widely available. It seems inconceivable that every fast food outlet and coffee shop would willingly pay for Murdoch’s rubbish, so he must be subsidising the distribution to a great extent.
The Oz seems to be distributed alongside the DT but several times I have seen perfectly folded copies of the Oz, that is, nobody reads it. ]
I have posted here several times that (in Sydney at least) you can pretty much nearly always find free copies of Murdoch newspapers. I think they do it to keep their circulation numbers up, which allows them to charge for advertising.
The real indicator of sales these days is how small the piles of their papers are in almost any news agency, and how the size of the pile is almost the same at the end of the day as it was at the beginning.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-10/dunlop-the-'small-government'-sucker-punch/7234168
[So this is the key matter to understand: the rhetoric of neoliberalism is anti-government, but the practice of neoliberalism is to use government to deliver neoliberal outcomes.
Everything from education to water and electricity services are privatised and operated on a for-profit basis for the benefit of private owners.
:::
In Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Europe, government employment services were amongst those that were forced to adhere to this new market logic.
Australia went further than most in fully privatising these services. The process began under the Keating Labor government in 1994, and was completed by the conservative government of John Howard.]
Player One@46
As usual.
MB only rarely offers evidence.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/03/08/nsw-parliament-upf_n_9414764.html?utm_hp_ref=au-politics
[The NSW upper-house of parliament unanimously voted to officially condemn far-right groups United Patriots Front and Reclaim Australia, over their “racist and threatening behaviour” and alleged threats made against a journalist.
Greens MP Mehreen Faruqi moved a motion in the Legislative Council on Tuesday afternoon that the chamber respond to recent actions allegedly carried out by the UPF and Reclaim groups….]
morning all
Finally some rain in my neck of the woods, The birds are so excitable!!
So sad to hear about Jon English passing away from complications during surgery. 🙁
The Dily Telegraph is the “de facto” Sydney morning newspaper.
It’s full of gossip, celebrity fluff and shock/horror stories.
Every now and again you get “Muslim Threat” yarns, spun by experts, or “Law & Order” outrage.
It appeals to the innate wowser in all of us Australians.
“Wowser” is a wonderful word. It not only implies moral disapproval, but also a sense of moral superiority. It describe the person who not only doesn’t like a particular behaviour, but also feels superior to the person exhibiting it.
To a lot of people, huddled away in front of their one-bar heaters, afraid to turn on their house lights because of electricity bills, besotted with one-armed bandits, with the Club as the height of their cultural aspirations, or lurking in their asbestos ridden shacks in Western Sydney, feeling good about yourself is not something that comes along too often.
The Daily Telegraph, written mostly by overpaid dilettantes from Sydney’s Inner or Eastern suburbs, owned by a multi-billionaire who gave up his precious Australian citizenship for profit (and who lives in New York), is the perfect shitsheet to spread this kind of wowserish, pseudo-feelgood rubbish.
BB @ 73,
Many years ago a client owed me some money. It’s a miserable time for any one in those circumstances but worse still I found the guy to be a repulsive human being. I think he was ultimately struck off for other crimes against humanity. Any way, the only joy in that period was that every time I tried to type his name, Microsoft spell checker, which I usually loathe, would default to spelling his name as “Knucklehead”.
Heard news break. BJoyce says a vote for Tony Windsor is a vote for Labor and the Greens!
Anyhoo BCassidy should be on ABC774 soon
mrdkirton: I want to see Johnny Depp as one of the nodding people behind Windsor at his press conference. #auspol
Darc
Lol!
For anyone interested in BCassidy
http://www.abc.net.au/melbourne/programs/listenlive.htm
People are of course allowed to negatively gear and / or send their children to private schools, if that’s what they judge is best for them and their children. They have every right to take advantage of whatever concessions and subsidies are available to them in the pursuit of this.
The debate is not about whether people should or shouldn’t be allowed do these things, it is about the extent to which they should be asssisted by the taxpayer in doing so, whether through public funding (in the case of schools) or through more favourable treatment in the tax system compared to other investments or to earnings from employment.
kelfuller: on @abcnewengland
@TonyHWindsor says he’ll focus on bringing NBN to the bush, full Gonski funding & stopping mining on the #LiverpoolPlains.
Wow. A Green moves a motion in Parliament and, for peg, that’s worthy of a post.
Do they do so so seldom that it’s news when they do?
Ohh…the humanity.
Bloody Indians have no concern for their people. They are hitting wonderful clean coal with a BIG NEW TAX, and putting the money into renewables.
This can NEVER work.
http://cleantechnica.com/2016/03/04/india-doubles-tax-coal/
victoria
[ Heard news break. BJoyce says a vote for Tony Windsor is a vote for Labor and the Greens! ]
I think it is going to be sufficient for most people that it is not a vote for Barnaby!
meher @ 62
[TPOF@41. Now there’s a funny thing. I really, really don’t agree with you. If I think something is morally wrong, I don’t do it, even if it’s perfectly legal.]
I probably did not express that point as well as I should. We all have our own line where we will not do something even though it is perfectly lawful because we are too uncomfortable about it. I simply was saying that you can take advantage – or indeed have to use – that you would rather was otherwise without being self-hating, or anything else. There are plenty of things that I am too uncomfortable doing that others of good will would do without blinking.
As for negative gearing, I am not against it. All I’m saying is that as it is currently set up it is not achieving any significant public purpose, other than enriching those who have plenty of cash flow. I like Labor’s policy because it will result in the most new accommodation for taxpayer dollar foregone in my opinion, without imposing any significant shock on the property market (despite the desperate lies being peddled by the Coalition).
BB@73 re Microsoft.
Sometimes when searching for technical information on Microsoft products I occasionally use Bing – their search engine. The results (even when searching exclusively Microsoft sites) are never as good as Google.
For a while Microsoft tried to make the word ‘Bing’ a verb meaning search (like Google).
In Microsoft presentations the speaker would say “if you need more information just Bing it”
shellbell@50
Parliament already has a plague of lawyers.
[Presumably if Windsor runs, he will be asked with whom he will align himself if there is another hung parliament.]
And he will say that he will decide at the time if the issue arises after considering the policies of each party seeking his support. And, of course, he will point to his his good judgement of Tony Abbott in not backing him.