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.
Almost 10 news outlets will go live to Windsor announcement.
mjrowland68: .@barriecassidy: ‘As I understand it, @TurnbullMalcolm has made up his mind he wants an election on July 2nd’ @774melbourne @InsidersABC
[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.]
That won’t cut it this time
Windsor live now
[Barnaby has a poster for ‘Mary Poppins’ on his office window.]
I have always had a thing for Julie Andrews.
Its official!!!! Windsor running.!!!1
BCassidy said that Turnbull wants a DD. He needs to be rid of the x bench as they will not cooperate with the govt
political_alert: .@TonyHWindsor has confirmed he’ll be standing as an independent candidate for New England in the Federal Election #auspol
Yep. Tony Windsor has thrown his hat in the ring
NBN Front and Centre
BCassidy thinks the budget will be brought forward one week to May 3 to enable election to take place on 2 July
victoria
I still don’t believe it. No gain after election for Turnbull with cross bench. It will be Greens with balance of power maybe NXT.
I have not seen any moves to change budget date in parliament and I think Shorten comments on budget today are spot on its not a flimsy thing you can move at whim.
So anyone using May 3 to predict a DD is suspect in my opinion and is probably relying on Abbott sourced leaks.
bemused
[Parliament already has a plague of lawyers.]
There’s a way to change this without discriminating against lawyers.
For example, you could change the sole output of parliament to tiddly-winks rather than legislation.
joshgnosis: Windsor says the NBN has to be fibre to the home, and he will fight for it.
gabriellechan: Windsor says he has never seen a time when issues in the electorate represent national issues so clearly; NBN, Gonski, land usage
Tony Windsor is covering all the issues which are important to him, which in fact detail the fallures of this current govt.
[That won’t cut it this time]
He’s setting out what matters to him and the policies he strongly supports for the benefit of the New England electorate. He will say that he would support the party that is most likely to genuinely deliver on these matters. Voters in New England will put two and two together comparing what he supports with the policies of the major parties and vote how they want.
gabriellechan: Windsor quotes David Morrison: the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. “I’m not prepared to walk past”.
Player One@46: “So in other words … no.”
What sort of evidence could I offer. I am not aware of any survey of the political views of people who send their children to top private schools.
All I can say is that, if you are driving past one of the top private schools in Hobart in a morning, you tend to see a lot of cars coming out with “Support the Greens” stickers on their back windows. When I lived in Canberra for a while, I encountered the same phenomenon: committed lefties who send their kids to Canberra Grammar, Canberra Girls’ Grammar or the flash school in Belconnen that I can’t remember the name of. They are usually quite embarrassed about it and tend to defend themselves by saying “We are strong supporters of the public system, but we found it wasn’t the right place for our child.”
I’m not at all critical of these people: the Hobart state schools are nothing at all to write home about (Canberra is a different matter: the public schools there are terrific, so I don’t really understand why anyone would choose not to send their kids to them).
I just find a certain harmless amusement in the paradoxes that face people who try to maintain their left wing stance as they become more and more financially successful.
One I’ve encountered lately goes a bit like this. One of my left wing friends will start talking about how unfair negative gearing and super concessions, etc. are. And I’ll say “but aren’t you taking advantage of all these things?” And the answer I get is “oh yes, our financial advisor set all that up for us. I find meeting with them so boring: I really don’t understand what they are going on about and can’t wait to get out.” This coming from people who have more than one tertiary degree.
These latte lefties I like to poke fun at from time to time are my friends and I love them all dearly. As I have posted before, I don’t hang out with right wingers: they are generally less intelligent and prone to make childish comments like “Gillard’s a witch”.
“BCassidy thinks the budget will be brought forward one week to May 3 to enable election to take place on 2 July”
Well, that’s confirmed, then. There will be no election on the 2nd of July. Wrong-way Barry has spoken.
How nice it must be to be intellectually and morally superior to one’s dear friends.
CTar1@47: “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.”
Well it’s just about the only interesting policy issue on the table at the moment where there is some serious political debate. The Defence White Paper came out a couple of weeks back and it was full of interesting stuff, but both major parties fell over each other in a battle to show who supported it the most. Andrew Wilkie, with whom I rarely agree, made the excellent point that it was irresponsible to expand government spending on defence during a time of large surpluses and underfunded health and education systems. But he was largely ignored.
I’m anticipating there might be an interesting debate on superannuation coming up soon: one on which I will be on the side of the angels from the point of view of most posters on here. Labor has an excellent proposal (although arguably it doesn’t go far enough) to make the over-60s pay some tax on their superannuation earnings.
Meanwhile, the Liberals are apparently looking at reducing the $30,000 limit on concessional superannuation contributions to $20,000 and also significantly reduce the after tax contribution limits. Which would be defensible as part of a package that also restricted negative gearing (ideally, giving some choice to taxpayers as to whether they’d like to take their maximum allowable deductions as investment losses or superannuation contributions).
But if, as it seems, the Libs are going to chicken out on neg gearing but rip into super, the tax system is going to be biased even more strongly towards geared savings rather than equity savings. A simply dreadful idea. I’d massively favour Labor’s mix of policies – even including their sub-optimal neg gearing changes and their OTT reduction in the CGT concession – to the unbalanced mess that the Liberals are likely to create.
gabriellechan: Windsor: Not everyone has the same water resource as the Liverpool Plains. Why would you mess with it.
Fulvio Sammut @121: “How nice it must be to be intellectually and morally superior to one’s dear friends.”
I certainly don’t think that. Give me a glass of wine and a political debate and I can be as hypocritical and self-contradictory as anyone. Surely you’ve worked that out by now.
Didn’t think Windsor was the type he obviously misses feeling important he has many fooled with sage granddad routine. Even if he wins which is highly unlikely he is just going to be an independent who’s vote meets bugger all, you will here about as much from him as you have from Wilke in this term
CTar1@113
They have vastly disproportionate representation.
Considering lawyers have a 100% hold on the judiciary, they should be limited in the legislature and the executive. It is up to parties to do this.
steelydan
Thanks for confirming the panic in LNP circles 👿
[Even if he wins which is highly unlikely he is just going to be an independent who’s vote meets bugger all…]
I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that said about Tony Windsor 🙂
I think a lot of right-wing punters would be happy to see Barnaby lose his seat because he is an embarrassment to everyone.
I am with bemused about too many lawyers.
To Draft the legislation is what Clerks are for they are the ones that need to be lawyers.
A party only needs one or two lawyers to help with that for unintened consequences.
Drafting legislation is no argument for lawyers in parliament as representatives of the people. It makes more sense to have scientists and academics than lawyers.
However when all is said and done parliament should reflect society. That means actors, singers, tradies, lawyers, doctors, nurses, and the list goes on.
From the front page of the AFR -“super tax breaks limited”
Where O’Dwyer says
[
Super tax concessions are a ‘gift’ from the government and shouldn’t be taken for granted
]
I guess as opposed to negative gearing
I guess as soo
[Considering lawyers have a 100% hold on the judiciary, they should be limited in the legislature and the executive. It is up to parties to do this.]
Interesting topic.
No problem with lawyers being heavily involved in drafting legislation. I would prefer a more representative bunch of MPs voting on it however.
If the your average joe MP cant understand the legislation (even with input from advisers) then the legislation needs to be rewritten so they can understand it enough to vote on it.
Which brings up the issue of MPs actually voting on legislation on its merits. To quote GG, thats opening a pandoras box of worms.
joshgnosis: 42 minutes into the Windsor presser, and ABC cuts away. Sky News still running with it.
Labor has an excellent proposal (although arguably it doesn’t go far enough) to make the over-60s pay some tax on their superannuation earnings.
I agree. I see no reason why superannuation pensioners over 60 (and I am one) should be treated more generously than those in employment, for example. After all, the pensioner has benefited greatly from concessions during his / her working life to accumulate a pension.
A pension or annuity payment comprises part income and part a return of capital. An actuary can work out the values. It’s a bit like the reverse situation on paying off a mortgage – pay the interest and capital as you go along.
We should tax the income component in the same way that we would tax any other earnings, be they from other investments or from employment. The return of capital component should not be taxed. This is how it used to work before Peter Costello’s 2007 changes. The pension fund provides a breakup of payments between income and capital for the pensioner / annuitant’s tax return.
steelydan uses a random word generator for posting
[“who’s vote meets bugger all “]
[Je Suis Geek
Je Suis Geek – @geeksrulz
Shorter Windsor: Rightwing own Turnbull. #auspol
3:21 PM – 9 Mar 2016
3 RETWEETS3 LIKES]
meher baba
[ What sort of evidence could I offer. I am not aware of any survey of the political views of people who send their children to top private schools. ]
If you don’t have the evidence, you shouldn’t make the claim. And keep in mind the sillier the claim the more likely it is someone will call “bullshit!” and ask you to provide it.
I’m anticipating there might be an interesting debate on superannuation coming up soon
I’m not. It will go the usual way, out of the Abbott workbook: Labor will put up a modest, reasonable proposal. The Government and its media allies’ attack dogs will scream that it is the most monstrous injustice ever, that seniors (even those with million dollar super balances) will be starving in the streets, that the economy will collapse if super pensioners aren’t treated more gnerously than those of the same age still in the work force, the sky will fall in and a giant wombat will devour Whyalla.
Tony Windsor clearly and forcefully outlined the issues around water, climate change, the NBN and Gonski at his press conference. He will have influence way beyond the New England electorate.
Barnaby Joyce earlier had responded to Windsor’s likely stand with some gibberish about all the support he was getting, like some bastard who’s in hospital after being run over by a bus, thanking people for the flowers.
I would not be surprised if Turnbull wants an election on 2 July, not for any rational reason, but because he is tired and fed up. He’s eaten enough s… from his party. He wants some sort of mandate from the electorate to assert his control. We bludgers tend to look for rational reasons for things, but often the irrational and emotional wins out.
On the other hand, I could be entirely wrong.
TROG – Hah, hah.
guytaur@130
Without our infestation of lawyers in parliament we might get simpler, easier to understand laws without so many loopholes.
We would be better served by having a few more scientists and engineers etc in parliament.
Good point MB @122, if the coalition put limits on super but leaves negative gearing and capital gains tax unchanged, that will send a strong message where the government thinks you should invest.
Tony Windsor just needs to say “I saved Australia from 3 years of Abbott government”
[Campbell Newman in Brisbane!?!]
Plenty of people were telling Newman to piss off back to Canberra when he was Premier.
He’s just misunderstood what they meant.
[Without our infestation of lawyers in parliament we might get simpler, easier to understand laws without so many loopholes.]
Well, no.
For starters, if you want loopholes reduced, then people who have spent their professional career looking for them are going to be an asset.
Secondly, loopholes are more likely in ‘simple’ legislation. The complexity of a law is often an indicator of how much thought has gone in to the way it could be interpreted.
[Without our infestation of lawyers in parliament]
Particularly NLLL’s – Nasty Liberal Lady Lawyers
[Without our infestation of lawyers in parliament…]
You are just baiting the lawyers now.
[Tony Windsor clearly and forcefully outlined the issues around water, climate change, the NBN and Gonski at his press conference. He will have influence way beyond the New England electorate.]
If he’s mentioning climate change, he may have trouble getting airtime, as this has become a taboo subject, as many parts of Australia suffer through record heatwaves. No wonder the ABC cut him off.
Funny how our political discourse has become so debased that we rarely touch on any of the subjects that Windsor mentions.
This country is well and truly stuffed if Turnbull gets back in.
Re Shiftaling @144: unfortunately he just postponed it.