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.
This bridge certainly has a fatal attraction to large vehicles. Surely a height warning frame prior to the bridge can be set up.
Two more trucks collide with Montague Street bridge in South Melbourne
In the space of just four hours, the infamous Montague Street bridge has claimed another two victims.
A truck hit the bridge in South Melbourne about 11am on Wednesday , and another had also reportedly collided with the notorious structure by 3pm.
The first truck was carrying a large skip, which was left in the middle of the road. The road was cleared, but it was only a matter of hours before the bridge struck again, according to Melbourne radio station Triple M.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/two-more-trucks-collide-with-montague-street-bridge-in-south-melbourne-20160427-gog7d7.html#ixzz470j71OZW
First Dog On The Moon on the 60 minutes fiasco.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2016/apr/27/tonight-on-60-minutes-we-present-a-story-so-shocking-you-will-be-really-really-shocked
Baby Boomers braced for bleak retirement, poll finds
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/baby-boomers-braced-for-bleak-retirement-poll-finds-20160427-gofvib.html
Citizen
The Montague Street bridge is probably one of the best known bridges in Melbourne if not Victoria. It is driver laziness and incompetence that is the main cause for “on bridge incidents” to paraphrase from recent government spinners. Apart from lowering the road or raising the bridge (it is heritage listed I think) the only other option is to install boom gates at either end of Montague St which are triggered by height sensors… Failing that close the road entirely.
citizen,
The plan is to install a height indicator. According to reports I’ve heard, it shouldn’t be far off.
B.K.,
Jacinta Allen, Vic. Minister for Transport was on Raf Epstein’s Drive program and following her spot the talk back was mostly positive for the transport announcements.
Also, he mentioned the Essential result and the trend in his “Fight Club” segment to the Lib. Senator Ryan and you could almost hear Ryan’s buttocks clenching.
Just for entertainment purposes, I put 52 to Labor into Antony Green’s calculator = 80 seats. Luverly.
The Montague Street Bridge has had more hits than the Mafia.
Musrum, stfu is now working well, thanks. Others should check their lists, I had to rewrite the names again.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/manus-island-detention-centre-to-close-png-prime-minister-says-following-court-bombshell-20160427-gogbyo.html
The Montague Street bridge should have been fixed during the conversion of the Port Melbourne line to tram operation.
It’s a major thoroughfare so any fixes will see it affect traffic (and possibly tram operation) in a big way.
Hate to say, but I DID tell them so…
Dutton umms and waffles so much, I expect butter and syrup to come out of my speakers.
Richard Marles is an idiot.
Lovely to see Turnbull go straight for the Abbott playbook on Labor’s ETS announcement.
Way to make sure everyone who still held faint hopes that you might actually stand for something finally wakes up to themselves Mal.
Hilarious to listen to the Lying Hunt go with his ‘Julia Gillard’s Carbon Tax on Steroids’ overreach and Barnyard with his land police bunkum. The voters had a taste of what sort of government mindless rubbish like this produces. And the Libs sacked the Captain to try and make them forget.
Like Burke said to Talcum, ‘why did you replace him, he was better at it’.
The arseclowns are so palpably frantic they are throwing the kitchen sink and looking around for any thing else not nailed down. It’s so over the top it makes Conroy’s shot at Cosgrove look like a positive character reference. Howard could get away with nonsense because he wrapped it in cash. All this mob has is nonsense and desperation that you can smell a mile off. It’s a stench that turns voters off in droves.
Mr Turnbull would seem to be in somewhat of a cleft stick at the moment. He passed up the chance to fight and win against the conservatives in his party well before the election. So if he’s to govern from the centre, he now needs a mandate from the electorate to do that. But if he comes out explicitly seeking a mandate for policies anathema to the conservatives, they are quite capable of dropping him in it right in the middle of the campaign. These factors together would seem to leave him with nowhere to go – for 10 weeks. He must be kicking himself for having locked in the DD.
Bluey’s Bulletin No 38 Day 38 of 103
Bluey reckons that the Blue Team cannot get consistent control of the agenda. And when they do claim the agenda it turns into an instant shambles. Most of yesterday’s talk was about cynical vote buying. $50 billion is a lot of cynicism’s worth. Most of today’s talk was about Labor gazumping Turnbull’s pathetic commitment to the Great White Reef. This was followed by Dutton’s ward setting himself alight and PNG telling Dutton to Eff Off. Bluey reckons this crowd have a consistent track record for turning every single thing they touch to political shit. Bluey reckons that the Blue Team (hah!) would do better doing nothing and saying nothing.
BESIDE THE POINT
Bluey reckons that Mr Turnbull has gone to considerable trouble to point out that he is beside the point. Bluey reckons the open question is whether enough Aussies will wake up to this in time.
BLACK SWAN EVENT
A quarter of negative inflation, aka deflation. Bluey can only count to eight but he does know that, if there is one thing that all economists get toey about, it is deflation.
BLACK SWAN EVENT
Consumer confidence joins Turnbull’s popularity stats and heads south. Westpac reckons that the fall in consumer sentiment is a ‘surprise’. Bluey wonders which planet Westpac is on. Pessimists have now outnumbered optimists for two months in a row.
http://www.westpac.com.au/about-westpac/media/reports/australian-economic-reports/
GRATTAN GRATES ON TURNBULL
Bluey reckons that the Grattan institute’s handling of the public policy debate on negative gearing has been quite devastating. It is not as if Turnbull had no warning. The Institute provided all political leaders with their Report and offered to discuss same.
SUFFREN’ SUBS
Subs+frigates=$85 billion, or around $950,000,000 per Coalition MP. Bluey reckons they are worth a kick up the arse. Bluey notes that the cynicism about the sub decision was universal. National security = maintaining Liberal bums on political life support. Bluey reckons that this bodes ill for Turnbull’s ‘who do you trust’ stuff.
Bluey reckons that the Helicopter Landing Ships were purchased because they can readily be turned into baby fixed wing carriers. Bluey also reckons that the French subs were purchased because they can readily be turned into nuclear powered and nuclear-armed boats. Wet dreams. Bluey also reckons that the people who really know all this stuff would get shot if they said so. Which is why we voters and taxpayers have not heard about it. Bluey reckons give it 15 years and the proof will be in the pods.
Bluey reckons that X has been snookered by the subs stuff… and that now it is over to the preference whisperers.
SUB A.D.D.
Buey reckons that the electorate has a finely-tuned inattention span. Basically, the biggest-ever defence spend controlled the political agenda for less than 24 hours.
DUTTON DOES IT AGAIN
Dutton does not appear to believe that Australia’s involvement in breaking the Constitution of PNG is a worry, is a moral concern, an ethical concern, a legal concern or a diplomatic concern. She’ll be right, mate. Politically it does give Dutton a chance to do confirmation bias for Aussie potato brains but Turnbull’s growing pile of feckless tawdry baggage will not help with swinging voters. Dutton saying that he is sorry that an asylum seeker under his care tried to burn themselves alive is like Trump saying he loves Hispanics. Late news: PNG is putting out the trash – Dutton and Bishop and Turnbull.
ESSENTIAL JUMPS THE SHARK
Bluey is deeply suspicious of any Essential poll that is different from the last half dozen Essential polls. Still, if Essential has jumped the poll shark, it has at least jumped in the right direction. Bluey reckons that everyone is looking in the wrong direction for the poll entrails. Bluey reckons that another week of Cash’s voice and the Coalition will be dead, buried and cremated.
SHONK?
Payne’s partner tries to pay a surprise visit to DCNS… a week before the decision is announced.
SHONK?
Canoe Johnstone’s ex-senior adviser gets a nice little senior management job in…. DCNS.
GOOD CLIMATE, BAD CLIMATE
Bluey reckons that Shorten has come up with some savvy global warming policy settings. Hunt is still playing silly buggers with the Great White Reef and Adani while glorybagging about signing an international agreement that most of his colleagues hate with a visceral passion. BCA comes out in support of Shorten.
ABBOTT!
Bluey notes that Mr Abbott keeps inserting himself into Mr Turnbull’s oxygen.
FUD PHOO PHOO
Bluey notes that the forces of darkness have ramped up the usual election terrism FUD. Arrests, cybersecurity, subs, the evil people smugglers, yada, yada, yada. Bluey reckons that they might be helping araldite the araldited but it seems that normal people are all FUDDED out. They really want a decent full time permanent job, a decent living wage, access to quality public schools, and access to quality public health.
OCCIE COMMAND AND CONTROL
Bluey reckons there is absolutely no truth in rumours that occies are to be strapped to torpedoes to create perfect cephalopod command and control drones.
Verdict for the day: Labor
Cumulative tally: Labor 25 Liberals 12
William – just so you know there was a long bit of weirdness just then – that ‘endlessly repeating page’ kind of thing where I kept getting Raaraa’s comment at 6.01pm as the last comment when I refreshed even though I had seen BB’s subsequent comment.
Refreshing on the PB main page at the time would mostly show 3410 comments in this thread, but occasionally it would show 3411 comments. Refresh again and it would show 3410 comments.
Anyway, I’m assuming it’s something like the old overload issues.
and Bluey is right
I want to post this while I can still find it, as it has almost disappeared from the SMH website:
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/csiro-job-cuts-threaten-lab-that-invented-wifi-20160425-goegih
I was at CSIRO Marsfield for a short while when they were developing this technology, and lucky to hear about the novel idea of connecting computers wirelessly via a radio wavelength link. At the time there were ways of connecting to local infrared networks – a laptop I bought in 2001 had this capability – but as the guys at what I call Radiophysics explained that wireless would not be stopped by walls, and would have a much spatiall wider applicability.
NICTA is great, but the loss of ~100 jobs is a very sad loss to the amazing intellectual capital that Australia has built up over the years. Also, we are talking about one of the more profitable arms of CSIRO. What are they thinking?
Richard Di Natale is an idiot.
pedant
Is it definitely locked in?
kakaru @ 1.16pm,
I’d like to see some polling from some key marginals. The government ought to be tanking in regional seats.
I’ve just come in from an afternoon of doorknocking my local marginal seat electorate and I can tell you that I have been asking people which issue is most important to them in the upcoming election and I can pretty confidently say there are 3.
* Negative Gearing. Finally an issue which is splitting the Grey Power voters. They are falling into 2 camps. The ones who have Investment Properties & SMSFs. They still want to keep it as it is. However, there is now a group who are looking at their lives and seeing what they have been able to get and what their kids and grandkids no longer can and saying that’s just not right and something needs to be done about it.
* Penalty Rates. Nurses I spoke to don’t believe Coalition assurances that if Penalty Rates go they won’t be touched.
* Public Education. Locals just want to be able to send their kids to the local Public School and for them to get a good education. Simple as that.
And the one big negative, as in political kryptonite for the Labor Party, is Boat People. However, from a uniquely left wing perspective, in that intending Labor voters put dealing with Homelessness of Aussies already here before housing for boat people that may arrive here. Also from the jobs perspective wrt our young people that can’t get a job and they would like a Labor government to do more for them than boat people.
So there you have it. A random sample of views from a marginal seat. 🙂
ABC now kindly playing coalition attack ads. Free of charge I suppose.
BB @ 6.02 – and they fail to mention that it was the unions that saved all of the heritage building through the 1970’s green bans. Oh, that’s right. Is union, is bad.
http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/green_bans_movement
Tom.0
I think I have identified the error in your logic.
The proposition that they are in fact thinking is false.
lizzie – the election hasn’t been called – the governor general hasn’t received instructions from Turnbull – so technically the DD is still only a theoretical possibility.
However, the politics of Turnbull now not calling the DD in the manner he has repeatedly said he will – including just last night – whatever reputation Turnbull might have had left will be utter toast.
Of course the Libs and Turnbull may feel that hanging on to their ministerial positions for another 4 or 5 months is worth a bit of egg-on-face if it looks like they are definitely going to lose, so … we’ll see.
And of course the Libs could replace Turnbull with someone else allowing them to reset the DD political calculus. Oh that would be hilarious. And if it were Abbott to come back we could have complete symmetry with RGR/ATA. The obsessive in me finds that concept aesthetically pleasing somehow.
C@T
Were they aware of the grandfathering and that existing arrangements would remain the same?
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/understatement-of-his-prime-ministership-time-for-malcolm-turnbull-to-chart-new-road-map-on-asylum-seekers-20160427-gogiu5.html
Which was why I was able to predict with 100% certainty before the National Conference that Labor would adopt the Libs policies on boat turn backs etc without amendment.
It is simply a loser for Labor so they have neutralised it. The Libs desperation shows in how often they want to bring up the arrivals under the last Labor Government. Shorten simply has and will continue to refuse to allow a cigarette paper’s width of light between Labor and Government’s position.
Labor has far too many other policy winners to hammer home. They won’t want to waste a second talking about boats when they can be scoring goals.
Warren peace
What did you make of this article? I thought it was Mark Kenny polishing a turd for the coalition for the budget next Tuesday, when “Turnbull will go even harder than Labor on super tax concessions, thus raising more money for the Federal coffers.” or WTTE.
Also, his last line in the article:
“With negative gearing set to be centre stage in the election contest, respondents were locked at 41-41 on Labor’s policy of limiting the tax concession to apply solely to newly constructed homes.”
Does anyone know where this statistic comes from? Essential research shows (today) shows that 48% support limiting negative gearing v. 24% that oppose:
“Q: Would you support or oppose the following measures being included in the Federal Budget?
Limit negative gearing Total support: 48% Total oppose: 24%”
http://www.essentialvision.com.au/category/essentialreport
c@t
Thanks for providing feedback.
Re asylum seekers. Richard Marles today repeated that team Labor is all for offshore processing
“…Does anyone know where this statistic comes from?”
WHK Horwath?
Absolutely, I said it myself weeks ago. Turnbull has wedged himself. If he doesn’t go to the DD the Libs will replace him. Seeing as they are now locked into a negative scare campaign based election they might as well go back to the best negative campaigner they have.
The symmetry would be lovely. But not as lovely as seeing a puffed up non entity like Turnbull, who has spent his whole life deluding himself that he was Prime Minister material, junked again for Abbott before he could even overtake Reid for longevity in the job.
How frickin unsurprisement. Rather than say he declined as if it was some lovely invitation. He has refused to attend…….
Cabinet Secretary @A_Sinodinos has now declined to attend this hearing, where Labor planned to question him #auspol
5:19 PM – 27 Apr 2016 · Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
23 23 Retweets 6 6 likes
Stephanie Anderson
5m5 minutes ago
Stephanie Anderson @stephanieando
UPDATED: Manus Island MP expects detention centre to be closed by tomorrow #auspol http://ab.co/1Ugj6iK
Embedded image
Douglas and Milko
The part I found interesting was
The results suggest the nation’s 5.5 million Baby Boomers are not the fixed conservative bloc that is sometimes assumed, and that worsening financial circumstances mean many would back policy options previously ruled out.
The DD’s got to be inevitable now, barring some very significant force majeur. Malcolm’s not going to put it off, just to have to front up to a normal House plus half Senate election a few months later.
Sky News Australia
29m29 minutes ago
Sky News Australia @SkyNewsAust
@ljayes and @David_Speers discuss decision to close Manus Island – a huge blow to offshore processing #TheLatest http://snpy.tv/1rhdJo6
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/submarine-deal-victoria-demands-share-of-50b-project-20160427-gogg7j.html
Mal could be on the phone to the AEC, demanding some unforeseen technical problem to arise because of the senate reforms, precluding a DD election.
Well I hope if the good senator has refused to attend the senate hearing, he is suspended from the senate without pay until such time as he does attend.
Oh look, airborne pigs…
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victorian-state-budget-2016-deliverance-for-hoddle-street-bottlenecks-20160427-gog2fo.html
And you all thought that the song “A redback on the toilet seat” was stupid didn’t you? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-36136635 😛
Tom.
What’s the betting that Turnbull forgets to see the GG in time for a DD and the election date is put off till later in the year.
Waleed had to get his gratuitous shot in on Shorten as being boring, but that was a brutal takedown of Turnbull and Negative Gearing on the Project.
Labor would be clinking glasses watching that. They won’t mind at all that Shorten is seen as boring (and therefore safe), but anyone not with a vested interest in making money via Negative Gearing will have seen basically an ad for Labor’s policy.
Greensborough Growler @ Wednesday, April 27, 2016 at 7:12 pm
What’s the betting if he doesn’t go DD he’ll be replaced?
ratsak,
Shorten being boring is not a negative image.
Toyota Carollas are slow, moderate and consistent. They sell heaps of them.
John Howard was slow moderate and consistent. He won 4 elections.
Roast lamb is cooked slowly to be moderate and consistent. Every one loves a good roast lamb.
If Shorten is slow, moderate and consistent he can run the country for a decade or more imho.
Vogon Poet
Wednesday, April 27, 2016 at 7:03 pm
Mal could be on the phone to the AEC, demanding some unforeseen technical problem to arise because of the senate reforms, precluding a DD election.
That might not work as the AEC seems to be on the ball with advertisements today about the new method of senate voting. Of course, behind the scenes things might be a bit slower.
Talking of government advertisements, they seem to be going into overdrive with ads on all manner of subjects.
gecko,
Who would want the job. Pyne?
Turnbull has disappeared without trace because he hasn’t stamped himself on the Party and has tried to run as Abbott lite. The voters don’t want that!
Returning the Abbott would make the election a rout!
Labor into $3.25 now
I’m in agreement with GG on Shorten. The electorate is sick of ‘shouty’ and ‘Mr Suave’ has proven a vacuous shadow of Mr Shouty.
Stable but with thoughtful conviction … that is how Shorten is beginning to be seen – even by the media.
Electorate will welcome Shorten if thing keep moving in the current direction. Not because he is exciting but because he is unexciting and likely dependable. OZ has been crying out for dependable.