As the many polls published before this week’s parliamentary sitting showed no let-up in the Coalition’s deteriorating standing in the polls, the BludgerTrack poll aggregate has come as close as close can be to tipping over in Labor’s favour. However, it continues to credit them with a bare parliamentary majority (which can probably be bumped up another notch with the near certainty that Clive Palmer’s seat of Fairfax will revert to type), owing to the advantage it attributes to sitting members. The boost to Labor adds five to their projected seat total, including three gains in Queensland, two in Western Australia and one in New South Wales, balanced by the loss of one in Tasmania. Note that the Nick Xenophon Team now gets its own entry on the vote totals (although not yet on the graphs), since its primary vote is now being tracked by ReachTEL as well as Roy Morgan. ReachTEL is no longer recording the Palmer United Party, whose support is now statistically insignificant.
Newspoll and Ipsos both provided new numbers on leadership ratings this week, the effect of which has been to throw things a little out of whack, owing to the gaping difference in the numbers for Malcolm Turnbull. Where Ipsos recorded Turnbull with a diminishing but still positive net approval rating of 13%, Newspoll recorded the reverse (i.e. minus 13%), despite their similar results on voting intention. Since BludgerTrack uses bias adjustments based on each pollsters’ performance relative to all the others, this result alone has shaken up the entire model. With all that said though, all the movements on the leadership ratings were fairly modest.
The familiar BludgerTrack graphs on the sidebar are a casualty of the Crikey redesign that was launched this week, but stay tuned, because there will soon be a module to accommodate them. Here’s a make-do for the time being, below which you can find the latest round of preselection news and what have you.
• The Greens are hawking a ReachTEL poll of 800 respondents in the seat of Melbourne Ports which finds 60% of Labor voters oppose the party directing preferences to the Liberals ahead of the Greens, as Labor member Michael Danby has threatened to do (albeit that he exceeded his brief in doing so). Danby’s threat came amid an increasingly complex situation with respect to preferences in Victoria, as Liberal Party state president Michael Kroger says the party is open to a “loose arrangement” with the Greens, who are “not the nutters they used to be”, which he puts down to the leadership of Victorian Senator Richard di Natale. Kroger’s hope is presumably to lure the Greens into running open tickets in Victorian marginal seats, in return for the Liberals directing preferences to the Greens ahead of Labor in the inner-city seats of Melbourne, Wills and Batman, contrary to their position in 2013.
• After 22 years as local member, and 29 in parliament altogether when her time as a Senator is taken into account, former Speaker Bronwyn Bishop was defeated in Saturday’s preselection vote in her northern beaches Sydney electorate of Mackellar. The seat will now be contested for the Liberal Party by factional moderate Jason Falinski, owner of a health care equipment business, former adviser to John Hewson and Barry O’Farrell and campaign manager to Malcolm Turnbull in Wentworth in 2004. Falinski prevailed over Bishop in the final round by 51 votes to 39, following the exclusion of Walter Villatora – a party activist who has spearheaded a campaign for preselection reforms that are principally favoured by the hard Right, and a close ally of Tony Abbott’s as the president of the Liberal Party’s Warringah branch. The score in the previous round had been Falinski 40, Bishop 37 and Villatora 12, with Villatora’s supporters breaking overwhelmingly in favour of Falinksi in the final round. This reflected the hostility of conservatives towards Bishop over her support for Malcolm Turnbull in the September leadership challenge vote. The currently unpaywalled Crikey has a thorough account of Saturday’s proceedings from a source familiar with the matter.
• Another safe seat Liberal preselection on the weekend, in Philip Ruddock’s seat of Berowra, resulted in an easy victory for Julian Leeser, a former executive director of Liberal-aligned think tank the Menzies Research Centre, and current director of government policy and strategy at the Australian Catholic University. Leeser is of Jewish background, and is said to be aligned with the Centre Right. He won 97 votes in the ballot against 10 for Robert Armitage, a local barrister; four for John Bathgate, a staffer to Christoper Pyne; and three for Nick McGowan, a one-time adviser to former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett.
• Bob Baldwin, the Liberal member for the regional New South Wales seat of Paterson, has announced he will not contest the next election. Baldwin suffered a heavy blow in the redistribution as the seat exchanged conservative rural territory for more populous areas of the Hunter region, turning Baldwin’s 9.8% margin from 2013 into a notional Labor margin of 1.3%. The Michael McGowan of the Maitland Mercury reports preselection nominees are likely to include Newcastle businesswoman Karen Howard and Port Stephens councillor Ken Jordan. Howard performed well as an independent candidate in the Newcastle state by-election of October 2015, and ran for the Liberals in the seat at the state election the following March. However, her tone-deaf attack on a local high school student over his geography project in November might cause some to doubt her judgement.
• After a bumpy ride, Liberal MP Craig Kelly has been confirmed in his preselection for the southern Sydney seat of Macarthur. The conservative Tony Abbott backer had earlier appeared to be under threat from Kent Johns, a powerbroker of the increasingly dominant moderate faction, but Malcolm Turnbull persuaded him to withdraw in February. He remained under challenge from Michael Medway, who ran in Werriwa in 2004 and appears to work in financial services, but Murray Trembath of the St George & Sutherland Shire Leader reports he has now withdrawn.
• The article mentioned in the previous item also relates that Nick Varvaris, who won Barton for the Liberals in 2013 but has now been poleaxed by the redistribution, was “still in discussions with the Liberal Party” as to whether he will recontest the seat, after earlier indications he would spare himself the effort.
• Barrister Andrew Wallace has won the Liberal National Party preselection to succeed Mal Brough in the Sunshine Coast seat of Fisher. As the ABC reports it, Wallace “won the preselection ballot convincingly in the first round of voting ahead of five other candidates”.
• The West Australian reports on the headache facing the WA Liberals as they prepare to defend six Senate seats at a double dissolution election that is likely to net them fewer than that, with none of the incumbents intending to retire. It had been hoped that David Johnston, who was dumped as Defence Minister in December 2014, might lighten the load by accepting a diplomatic posting, but he has now confirmed he will run again. The report says the state branch’s protocol should see ministers Mathias Cormann and Michaelia Cash take the top two positions and Johnston take third owing to “seniority”, but that Johnston might be bumped to fourth to make way for Dean Smith, with Linda Reynolds and Chris Back in fourth and fifth.
• The West’s report likewise says that Louise Pratt, who lost her seat from the second position at the state’s 2014 Senate election re-run, is well placed to take the fourth position on the Labor ticket with help from affirmative action, and is even hopeful of bumping Glenn Sterle for a place in the top three. Earlier indications had been that the order of the top end of the ticket would run Sue Lines, Glenn Sterle and Pat Dodson, with the fourth up in the air.
• Duncan McGauchie, a former policy adviser to the then Victorian premier, Ted Baillieu, has prevailed in a field of five to win Liberals preselection to succeed Sharman Stone as the Liberal candidate in the rural Victorian seat of Murray. He faces significant opposition at the election from Damian Drum, Nationals candidate and state upper house member.
• Labor’s candidate for Christopher Pyne’s loseable Adelaide seat of Sturt is Matt Loader, a gay rights activist and (I think) manager at South Australia’s Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure. Hat tip to Chinda in comments.
I think that, on banking, Labor need merely point out that the banks support the government’s actions. Says it all.
I was also wondering about the framing of the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef ‘story’.
As is common practice these days, everything is interpreted through the framework of economics and business.
Therefore, the report that I heard viewed the problem solely in light of the effect it would have on tourism and business.
A thing about the Bludgertrack red and blue lines is that once they intersect, they just keep going. Labor is just intersecting again after 7 months.
Adrian
Agree re business focus and the reef. The importance of coral reefs to ocean ecosystems is massive.
William, in your Greens and Kroger story you talk about the notionally-Liberals possibly “directing” preferences to the Greens. It is time that everyone – especially experts like you and Mr Green – stopped using this language. Parties can recommend preferences. Only sheep take it as a direction. The more people refer to the recommendations as directions, the less the chance that the sheep will wake up to the fact that they are actually permitted by law to make up their own minds. We need a short clip of Patrick Swayze saying “Nobody directs Baby as to how she allocates her preferences!”
Bludgertrack is showing Labor to gain 4 seats in WA on a swing of 7.9%. The sequence should include Burt, Cowan, Hasluck and Swan. If the swing extends another 2 points we will also gain both Stirling and Pearce. Such a result is feasible this year.
Bludgertrack indicates Labor gains of 13 seats at this point. Considering there are many weeks to go – weeks of campaigning in which the deficiencies in the LNP line-up and policy offers will be fully exposed – Labor looks to be on track for a magnificent result.
Starting to like the new format ….kewl
New format is ok if we get avatars and numbering without having to install new software.
‘Labor looks to be on track for a magnificent result.’
I think/hope you are right, but the key will be the effect a partisan media will have, and the extent and speed at which the govt numbers deteriorate further.
Jack A Randa, I take “directing” there to mean they are aiming preferences at the Greens on their how-to-vote cards, rather than directing, as in commanding, voters to vote that way. It’s an entrenched term and won’t be changing. If any “sheep” take it as a direction, so be it. Voters are responsible for their own votes.
Jack A Randa @ Thursday, April 21, 2016 at 10:26 am
This is pure semantics. Of course parties attempt to guide the voting behaviour of their supporters. Many (though not all) voters want to know they may best support their preferred party’s objectives and will follow HTV’s. The proposition that it is voters that vote and not parties is a truism but is also disingenuous. The G’s and the LNP intend to prefer each other in some seats. Voters are going to be asked to vote against their past values and allegiances in order to disadvantage Labor. This is the essence of the dealing.
The G aim is to procure votes for themselves and in return deliver votes to the Liberals in places that will harm Labor. In a tight election, this may make the difference between the return of the reactionary, incompetent Turnbots or the election of a new Labor Government.
Labor are right to point out that the G’s intend to promote the election of Liberal candidates. That is exactly what they are doing.
Let’s hope that Labor can obtain a free-standing majority in their own right and do not need to deal with the treacherous Greens.
One of the writers yesterday, possibly Terry Barnes on the Drum thinks the ALP have had a good run,and has peaked too soon.
John Reidy @ Thursday, April 21, 2016 at 10:49 am
lol
Labor have simply climbed out of the valley and rallied their numbers on the open plain. The ascent to the ridge above remains to be accomplished. This arduous work is in motion.
@ Jack A Randa
Direct and Recommend are synonyms.
http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/direct
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/industrial-relations/federal-election-2016-penalty-rates-a-poll-bombshell/news-story/7ed70b7b84f0ac0fe1599a9a4cb0c515
more good news for the Libs!! 🙂
One of the writers yesterday, possibly Terry Barnes on the Drum thinks the ALP have had a good run,and has peaked too soon.
So one assumes that from here on in it is all Labor’s fault.
It is hard to argue against the polling trends, but election campaigns are a disruptor. I am sure conservative voters are convinced that the Coalition has an election strategy up their sleeves, and we will see it any day now. Perhaps they do, but the evidence of a decent strategy is thin on the ground. The campaign will halt the LNP downward trend at some stage, but it maybe too late for the Coalition. I have already presented my prediction of the endpoint. It is the impact of mudslinging that I am not sure about. There are some grubby soles in the Coalition (like Sophie M as described earlier) and they will try anything.
Sole is definitely a better word than soul to describe Sophie.
I agree briefly and nappin
Perhaps your comment could be phrased as
I am sure the press gallery are convinced that the Coalition has an election strategy up their sleeves, and we will see it any day now.
We all know FUD is the only election strategy the LNP have.
imacca @ Thursday, April 21, 2016 at 11:02 am
Martin Ferguson coming out in favour of slashing penalty rates. The man is a fvcking disgrace.
JR
The Gallery was busy telling us yesterday. The election strategy of the LNP will be revealed by the budget. This is the magic reset the Gallery believes the LNP will successfully return to government with.
“A thing about the Bludgertrack red and blue lines is that once they intersect, they just keep going. Labor is just intersecting again after 7 months.”
That might be true but note that the lines remain fairly close together until Abbott really lost it.
I think the story really is about Shorten. Not saying that he has to be a superstar but the public are still unsure about him. He’s doing ok, needs to speak from a place of authenticity and avoid the overly scripted lines (and I think there are definite signs of this happening more and more), but my fondest hope is for election debate Malfunction.
NAPPIN – If the libs go negative (as I’m sure they will – they’ll go totally feral when they see govt slipping from their grasp) it’s all over for them. The electorate really, really, really have had enough of that. Further, they’ve knackered their best attack dog.
Lets hope all the libs are thinking like Terry Barnes.
sortius: F**k Turnbull is a cretin. We drop 30 places, & are rated lowest internet affordability under his watch #NBN #auspol https://t.co/e2uTMr2fIv
JuliusFlywheel: Bingo. https://t.co/SdgSEJvT5P
sorry last post refers to media reporting
Remember the lead up to the 2007 election – the press gallery were still waiting for Howard to pull a rabbit out of his hat right up until polling day, and dismissed a Labor win because they couldn’t see where Labor would find enough seats.
Much the same memes are running now.
The Coalition elections strategy:
–
campaign on their record– say ‘innovation’, ‘nimble’ and ‘agile’ a lot
– demonise unions and unionists, wefare recipients and other class enemies
– budget sweetners to attract winging voters
– smear their opponents
– blather, bluster and lie
– hide policies and positions likely to be unpopular until after the election
– attack and campaign against the Rudd and Gillard governments
– bang the ‘security’ / terrorist drum
– if things look desperate, see if they can use ‘boats’
ABCNews24: .@macgibbon has been announced as the special adviser to the PM @TurnbullMalcolm on cyber security #auspol #ausvotes
zoomster @ Thursday, April 21, 2016 at 11:28 am
This ‘finding enough seats’ is just bs.
You win the votes, you win the seats. Because the swing is uneven, you miss out on some you expected and pick up some you didn’t expect.
While I hate describing politics in terms of sporting competitions, it is still a competition. But it’s not a horse race, which is how too many commentators see it. Rather it’s more like a football competition, where there is a whole season of competition, followed by a separate finals season.
Transported to the current situation, we have had the home and away season. During that we have seen the raging favourites play so badly they have had to dump the captain and coach two-thirds of the way through to make sure they even make the finals.
The new leadership immediately starts winning again, so much so that everyone reckons its a foregone conclusion they will win the premiership again and the rest of the competition should just go home now, or at the very least dump their leadership and try to regroup. Of course, what all the talking heads on the footy show don’t notice is that the competition is quietly working on their game and their plays, maintaining fitness and focus and plugging away.
So the competition ignore the advice of those who have no skin in the game but make their money pontificating on TV Offsiders (or the program immediately before) and keep on with their program to make the Grand Final and win it.
Meanwhile, the enthusiasm and structure of the leading team starts to break up again. Because they always had bigger problems than would be fixed by dumping the captain and coach for someone who is the crowd pick.
And here we are. Home and Away is over. And all the pundits look up and see that the competition has tied for the minor premiership, out of the blue. Of course, the footy show and offsider pundits dismiss that as a lucky break – or, rather, a number of lucky breaks, helped along by a few own goals on the part of the competition shoo-ins as they relaxed too much in the knowledge they already had the premiership in the bag and just needed to go through the motions of a budget and the obligatory union scare campaign.
But now is the finals season. The pundits still don’t believe the competition has the players, the moves, the physical strength even, to not fall apart and revert to the easy-beats in the Grand Final. Even though if pundits bothered looking they would see that the competition has been playing almost flawlessly for a very long time and kicking goal after goal and scoring try after try.
My money is on what my eyes and ears tell me; not what the pundits (who are trying to avoid ever saying they were wrong) all agree on because they all tell the same story to each other. One team has their game plan set out clearly; they are super fit; they are scoring. They are actually ahead and the other side are struggling playing catch up. The pundits don’t see it, but the scoreboard does not lie.
Labor to smash the reigning premiers in the Grand Final.
Kevin17 – I think the good doctors have tried to sew them back onto the attack dog, and he’s been giving them a bit of a trial. He will cause some pain on both sides, but in the end the dog is really an albatross.
(nothing against albatross’ by the way!)
Another issue coming home to roost for the LNP.
May not be huge outside Canberra but all those public servants that have been treated so badly have family and friends
http://www.theage.com.au/national/public-service/labor-to-rip-up-key-coalition-ir-policy-20160420-goarju.html
Bemused
Never agreed with you more. My take is that Labor will win votes exactly where they need to win – in the marginals where ordinary people are being left behind by the withdrawal of services, the rising cost of everything, the continued protection of rip-off merchants taking ordinary people down and, most of all, seeing their kids being disadvantaged by just about everything in education, health and all the other things they want Governments to provide but the IPA doesn’t.
The PR machines of the banks move into overdrive:
http://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/banks-to-review-commissions-whistleblower-protections-20160421-gobhuc.html#ixzz46Q9FqDhG
Follow us: @smh on Twitter | sydneymorningherald on Facebook
Can you lot shut up for a while? I am trying to listen to Malcayman’s presentation on cyber security.
There are easier ways to get to sleep, Puff
I tried, but my brain went to sleep after a few minutes of his waffle. Not that you lot helped, interrupting serious waffle with interesting comments on bludertrack.
I miss the sidebars. I know this format is for mobile devices but those graphs gave an immediate visual.
nappin
It is my penance for raiding the fridge last night and breaking my diet.
Puff, the Magic Dragon.
Thursday, April 21, 2016 at 11:39 am
Can you lot shut up for a while? I am trying to listen to Malcayman’s presentation on cyber security.
Don’t worry, he intends to outsource the lot to Wilson Security, since they have done such a good job on Nauru.
Also, it’s a very brave move to release a book before the election.
But they didn’t get this far with a small target strategy, and it will certainly create some air time as the journos’ inner circle dissect it ruthlessly. If it’s a winner, it could really carve out a space for Shorten to dominate in the personal arena
Nick Xenophon presser now
OK I can report on Waffle’s presentation:
1. potted history of the internet that Malcolm invented.
2. telling us stuff we already know about the internet that Malcolm invented.
3. Waffle Waffle
Waffle Waffle
Waffle Waffle
Waffle Waffle
Waffle Waffle
Waffle Waffle
Waffle Waffle
Waffle Waffle
Waffle Waffle
4. Waffle Waffle
Waffle Waffle
Waffle Waffle
Waffle Waffle
5. The gov’t will help protect us from very bad people on the internet by offering us something to check our computers.
6. Waffle Waffle
Waffle Waffle
Waffle Waffle
Waffle Waffle
I missed the rest because you lot wouldn’t shut up about how many seats Labor is going to win.
The banks are worried.
Xenophon demolishing Turnbull Cyber policy in that presser abc news 24 cut away from
smh: Australian academic Dame Leonie Kramer has died, aged 91 https://t.co/Dlw6nGq2wd https://t.co/4Tb2dCWUDQ
citizen, to counter any possible benefit for the banks, in the business pages of the SMH, the banks are pushing back against mandatory notification of data breaches as it might
‘stir up fear about a transition to a digital economy ‘
Bemused Comrade
Did you take special note of everyones’ election predictions yesterday.
There were a couple I found interesting, and if you have as sharp an eye as I think you have, you will find them too.
Other than that “i know nuu……thing……….!”
Love reading the left-wing trolls behind the News Corpse paywall.
Here’s a good one on penalty rates:
I know it is a very contested field of candidates but is Greg Hunt the most useless of all LNP ministers?
His whining about not being called and told about the bleaching problem on the Great Barrier Reef is pathetic.
Is he saying that unless he is given an actual phone call from a Queensland minister then he does not know of a problem?
Shouldn’t an Environment Minister be proactive in knowing about an important and iconic ecosystem?
Does he not have a massive govt. department to help him?
He is acting as if the problem of coral bleaching has just been discovered and he was unaware of it because the Queensland minister did not give him a personal phone call.
What a useless clown.