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.
Shorten really excellent good campaign presser.
DN
Some here can argue black is white then flip on a dime and argue the opposite.
zoomster
I refer you to DN’s comment at 239
I am not going to try and prove a negative. You have to prosecute the case with evidence that there are deals. So far you have failed spectacularly.
don
[vic
guytaur
[Yesterday i said you were as thick as two short planks. After your post at 2273, i revise it to four short planks. Cant believe the stupidity of that comment
You owe guytaur an apology for that comment. Who do you think you are?]
I like to think that we have enough tolerance to not get as nasty as Vic gets.
I thought her comment was very nasty and not necessary.
DN
The key words are ‘struck a deal’.
I doubt any political party has struck any deals at present, it is far too early in the game to box yourself in like that.
[The Greens are all care and no reaponsibility.]
“Do as I say not as I do”
[The government isn’t talking about an early election and neither is it considering bringing forward the budget, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann says.]
Could it be that Talcum has sniffed (too late) the ordure of a GST like reaction?
We’ll see soon enough, but the fool really has wedged himself good and proper. As Oakes said if he backs out of July 2 after all the groundwork done no one will be under any doubt that rumours of Turnbull having a spine were just baseless gossip.
Guytaur
[Its been Green policy to have open tickets for yonks. If the majors think thats a deal more fool them.]
So the Greens have had a consistent policy of running an open ticket in all seats. I was unaware of that.
DN,
Is it you personal? His backroom cadres are doing the negotiations. Another variation is that he has “No Specific knowledge”.
The deal has not been struck yet? But they are still talking. Kroger has said there is an arrangement. Who does one believe?
The election has not been called so using the word “who” is irrelevant at this time.
“Wriggle room” big enough for the “World’s biggest Pole Dancing Competition, comrade.
don
[ I still can’t work out why guytaur needs a phalanx of protectors to shield him from criticism. ]
guytaur is a member of a threatened species.
[Former federal MP Stephen Smith has confirmed he will try to topple WA Labor leader Mark McGowan if asked to do so by the party.]
So Barnett now deserves to win and the WA ALP branch should be dissolved and anyone associated with it banned for life, you just shouldn’t able to process oxygen if you are that dumb.
guytaur
[You have to prosecute the case with evidence that there are deals. So far you have failed spectacularly.]
Well, that’s because that’s not what I’ve been trying to do. I have been trying to show why it makes sense for the LIBERALS to try and do a deal with the Greens, and why the Greens might be open to such a prospect.
I haven’t said any deals have been done – quite the opposite.
Story updated on ABC still nothing about ethnicity, so glad the ABC is there to protect me from knowing to much.
MTBW,
Actually I think Don is reading a different PB blog than the one I read. To claim, twice now, that a “phalanx” of people defend guytaur is laughable.
He has demonstrated time and again he is more than capable of standing up to the pack.
zoom
[I doubt any political party has struck any deals at present]
So there’s no deal, but apparently there’s this magical understanding between the Libs and Greens that there will be a deal at some point in the future.
After all, the Greens are not politically smart, and agreeing to Senate reform (that they wanted anyway …) on their own hallucination that the Libs might rub their back later is proof of how politically dumb they are.
Riiiiiiiight.
Steely Dan
[ Story updated on ABC still nothing about ethnicity, so glad the ABC is there to protect me from knowing to much. ]
Why does their ethnicity matter so much to you?
P1
No sometimes I have spoken up when I have thought the groupthink has turned into bullying.
That is I have pointed this out. The dumb argument has been used in the past to denigrate my credibility as part of bullying behaviour.
I don’t think Victoria is doing bullying so I just responded to the issue with that long post as to why I think her viewpoint was wrong.
However there are some who do use the dumb argument to bully.
This is partly because if they can convince William of that then they get the same result that TBA got of being banned for being too dumb.
Jolyon Wagg
So pleased to hear your news. Where I live with only a small population melanoma is bad, 3 gone in last month.
Sick of this posting too quickly message
Oh, goddamit, now I have caught myself going in circles!
It makes sense for the Greens to get Liberal preferences. It makes sense that, in exchange for these, the Greens would back the Senate reforms being rushed through.
Ignore 2412, I have no idea why I wrote it!
zoomster
You have been implying deals have been done. Otherwise you could have just simply said. Yes no deals have been done. Yet. However the future is another matter.
Its succinct clear and leaves no doubt about your view.
DN
Yeah, you’ve got 2014 basically right.
The Greens think they’re smart. That’s enough to undo you, every time (a problem I often suffer from myself..)
ABC journalists sat around the table for a second time, should we report the whole story? No No No not until we can blame the Australian people and Government for the “disenfranchised ethnic youth”, it has got to be our fault somehow we just have to find the angle.
mari
William has promised there is a change coming again to PB and that the posting too quickly will be addressed as part of the revamp.
How long that will be William does not know
2415. I even checked.
I think it’s time I went for a swim….
Steely Dan
[ ABC journalists sat around the table for a second time, should we report the whole story? No No No not until we can blame the Australian people and Government for the “disenfranchised ethnic youth”, it has got to be our fault somehow we just have to find the angle. ]
Regular readers of this blog will know I am no fan of the ABC. However, I just can’t see how this makes any sense at all.
zoomster
In this weather a swim sound heavenly 🙂
JW
[So the Greens have had a consistent policy of running an open ticket in all seats. I was unaware of that.]
Speaking for my branch when discussions about preferences come up, there is always a robust debate between those who support open tickets and those who support preferencing Labor.
I am in the former camp. I don’t want anyone telling me, or suggesting to me how I should vote, and that includes my own party. To that end I disregard all htvs.
Each branch would have different viewpoints expressed depending on local considerations. To generalise is a mistake.
peg
Some of us have principles and some of us don’t. Thanks!
Sigh …
Mari
Thanks 🙂
With the “posting too quickly” thing, I have adopted BB’s suggested approach. I wait for 10 seconds after the last edit change to what I am posting and then press “Post comment”. It has worked first time consistently.
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/billionaires-warn-higher-taxes-could-prevent-them-from-buying-politicians like thist to lighten the mood this morning..
Thanks guytaur re posting too quickly error, will this get through?
Anyway I am off for a swim too now ,water 27 celsius and beach 70 metres from me 🙂
Those quoting the Alberici/De Natale Lateline interview might consider also posting this bit, where De Natale proves that Mal is not the only “waffler” in parliament …
[ EMMA ALBERICI: With respect, I asked you if you could rule out joining in a coalition with the Liberals, should that opportunity ever present itself into the future. That means potentially after another election.
RICHARD DI NATALE: As I said, I think it’s – I think it’s – I think it’s unthinkable. If the administration continues down the track that this administration is on, I think it is unthinkable. Again, …
EMMA ALBERICI: But you won’t rule it out, though?
RICHARD DI NATALE: Well they’re decisions that the party makes. They’re not decisions, Emma, that I would make unilaterally. We’re a democratic grassroots party. They’re decisions that we would make decisions collectively. You want to know what I believe? What I believe is that this – this government has been a government that has taken this country in the wrong direction. It’s a government that has slashed the social safety net, it’s undermined universal health care and education. Its position on issues like global warming is appalling. And the record it has, supported by the Labor Party, when it comes to the cruel and inhumane treatment of refugees and asylum seekers is shameful.
]
I also like the herd of unicorns De Natale throws in at the end, as he realizes how poor his response has been.
The Greens deal has been alleged the Greens will run open tickets in seats that will benefit Liberals, in return for Liberals to direct preference to the Greens that have a chance of winning off Labor. Thats a deal. If it isn’t then why doesn’t the Greens direct preferences to Labor to stop the Liberals in winning seats in the lower house?
Bob Katter directed preferences to Labor in federal election in 2013 in exchange for Labor preferences, and the LNP campaigned on the issue in Kennedy which saw a 16% swing against Bob Katter.
All LAbor is now trying to do is the same tact, and so they should.
Pegasus
[
Speaking for my branch when discussions about preferences come up, there is always a robust debate between those who support open tickets and those who support preferencing Labor.
I am in the former camp. I don’t want anyone telling me, or suggesting to me how I should vote, and that includes my own party. To that end I disregard all htvs.
Each branch would have different viewpoints expressed depending on local considerations. To generalise is a mistake.]
That’s interesting. Unfortunately you have shot holes in Guytaur’s position. It is clear the Greens could do a deal that involved them guaranteeing an open ticket in particular seats.
Cant help you there Player. If you cant see the issues then stay where you are seems a peaceful place.
P1
What I see is the usual political evasion whenever they’re trying not to answer in absolutes. Politicians hate answering in absolutes, especially about some unknown future.
I mean, in some unknown future the Liberal party might become the happy, fluffy, party.
It’s not unusual, nor is it evidence he’s trying to avoid talking about a deal.
P1,
It’s the Alice in Wonderland approach to political debate. The words mean exactly what he wants them to. Nothing more. Nothing less.
With the pegasus post and the david post we see the different approach to preferences.
It also explains the consistency between Di Natalie saying no deals and that he can’t over rule local branch members. He has made his position clear as to what he thinks is best for the Greens. However its still up to the local branches.
zoomster
Your local member could be reading advise as instruction. However if her local branch has voted open ticket that could explain it.
dtt
[Have you not noticed when at the polling booth – Greens rarely ever take a HTV. ]
They must think I’m a ‘Green’ then ‘cos I never take one.
For next election I’m going to make up some thing that looks like a HTV but actually says “I’m not an effing Green” and give one to anyone who tries to give me their HTV’s.
JW
No contradiction. Di Natalie said no deals have been made.
Policy is open ticket but due to democracy policy can be voted on by the local branch.
Not the way Labor does it of course.
I’m assuming ALP will put Liberals last in every seat?
Steely Dan
[ Cant help you there Player. If you cant see the issues then stay where you are seems a peaceful place. ]
How about Melbourne? They had riots there too overnight. I’ve searched and searched the ABC articles on it, and I can’t find any mention of ethnicity there either. By your logic, the ABC must be covering up that one as well, surely?
Oops, when I say “it’s not unusual”, that should follow on from the first paragraph. I think the Liberals becoming the happy, fluffy party would be unusual :P.
If briefly is around rather than doing hard campaign work I’m guessing they are way to discrete to vent at the Smith McGovan stupidity.
[Greens always try to make a virtue of their inadequacies.]
GG, my experience the of Greens tells me they seek to make a virtue of everything they say or do, with a big dose of self-righteousness, just in case we didn’t notice
I’m actually trying to credit the Greens with some intelligence here.
The scenario where the Liberals – whom the Greens distrust – wanders up, say, “here’s something you want, but you have to say yes now” and the Greens just leap at it, no questions asked, assumes that the Greens are incredibly naive and trusting, to the point where one would have to believe their offices are lined with deeds to the Sydney Harbor Bridge and they’re wondering why the six million dollars from the Nigerain Christian hasn’t arrived in their bank accounts.
To assume that the Greens got something out of the deal other than a warm inner glow is to give them a bit of credit, suggesting that they are capable of dressing themselves without too many problems and can be safely entrusted with scissors.
However, if DN and guytaur want to assure me that the Greens Senate team is composed of naive innocents who would get in a car with a stranger if he offered them lollies, I have to bow to their greater knowledge.
The swim was very nice. The river is closer than Mari’s sea, and I don’t have to put on any clothes, either.
Guytaur
There is a contradiciton because you said quite clearly that running an open ticket could not be a deal, when plainly it can. Your statement was incorrect, as Pegasus’ post made clear, and you should just admit that.
Sorry zoom, but your example of a stranger doesn’t match the situation. There is very little hidden information here.
JW
The post by Pegasus said no such thing. The post said that Pegasus would have no truck with the party telling her what to do.
Thats what an open ticket is. A deal only comes into it when there is no open ticket but instead preferences are directed.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/abc-4-corners-crew-detained-in-malaysia-20160313-gnhn8n.html