The flurry of national polling conducted after the budget for release at the onset of the official campaign has been followed this week by a lull in new results at national level, but with Galaxy and ReachTEL making sizeable entries in state-level federal polling from Queensland and Tasmania respectively. The only national results were the regularly weekly Essential Research and the first campaign poll from Roy Morgan, the latter of which was strong enough for Labor that they have moved back into the two-party lead by the barest possible margin. However, the strong showing for the Coalition in the Galaxy Queensland poll causes them to register 1.2% higher this week in that acutely sensitive state, translating into two extra seats to partly cancel out losses of one each in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia. Essential Research has provided new numbers for leadership ratings this week, and these seem to suggest Malcolm Turnbull’s slump is levelling off.
Some of you will no doubt be looking askance at that swing currently projected in Western Australia, and I don’t blame you. There are seven data points in the model from the past three weeks with a combined sample of 1048, which individually have the Coalition’s primary vote in the state ranging from 35% to 44%, compared with 51.2% at the 2013 election. However, I suspect that if you look back in a week or two, you will find the projection moderating somewhat. It’s also worth observing that the model is now crediting Palmer United with all of 0.1% of the national vote. The only pollsters who are still tracking the party are Ipsos and Morgan, with both ReachTEL and Essential having swapped them in their questionnaire for the Nick Xenophon Team. The last five data points for Palmer United are all 0%, and the previous ten were evenly divided between 0% and 1%.
News snippets:
• The Advertiser reported yesterday that a privately conducted ReachTEL poll had produced an encouraging result for Matt Williams, Liberal member for the marginal Adelaide seat of Hindmarsh. Williams was credited with 41% of the primary vote, compared with 25% for Labor candidate Steve Georganas, whom Williams unseated in 2013, 14% for Nick Xenophon Team candidate Daniel Kirk, 8% for the Greens, and 7% undecided.
• Nick Xenophon told the ABC’s Lateline his party’s strongest lower house prospect, Mayo candidate Rebekha Sharkie, was polling in the twenties. How formidable that makes her would depend entirely on how much of it was gouged from the vote for Liberal member Jamie Briggs, who recorded 53.8% of the primary vote in 2013.
• Labor has hit trouble in a sensitive spot in the inner Melbourne seat of Batman, after it emerged that David Feeney had failed to declare a negatively geared $2.3 million property in Northcote on the register of members interests. The news media is now applying the blowtorch to other aspects of the real estate portfolio of Feeney and his wife, and bringing unwelcome attention to his once close association with controversial ex-Health Services Union identity Kathy Jackson. Feeney is under pressure in Batman from Greens candidate Alex Bhathal, who outpolled Liberal candidates in her previous runs for the seat in 2010 and 2013, respectively finishing 7.9% and 10.6% behind Labor at the final count.
• A week after Labor dumped its candidate in the seat, there have been headlines about the contentious views of Sherry Sufi, the Liberal candidate for the Western Australian seat of Fremantle. Sufi’s conservative positions on matters such as same-sex marriage and the stolen generations apology had been well known, but Malcolm Turnbull contrived to make an issue out of them when he visited the electorate on Monday to spruik a local shipyard’s contract to build naval patrol boards, and neglected to invite his candidate. There have also been questions raised about the accuracy of Sufi’s employment record as presented on his candidate nomination form. Also absent during Turnbull’s shipyard visit was Premier Colin Barnett, whose leadership is increasingly coming under pressure amid deterioriating opinion polling.
imacca:
Yep. I doubt this election will be any different.
Before I leave the discussion for a while i’m still happy to be a Labor supporter rater than a Turnbull Coalition party supporter or an Abbott/Turnbull Government supporter or even a LNP supporter.
The strength is with Labor policies.
Dtt
Turns out the ppty is in Northcote, not Kew. Kew is a blue ribbon suburb of Melbourne and a townhouse can fetch 1.5 million dollars. The ppty values around Kew, Camberwell, Balwyn, Cantebury, Hawthorn etc are mouthwatering. 2.3 million is lose change. Northcote on the other hand, 2.3 million should buy a lot more
Loose
Darn
Thursday, May 19, 2016 at 8:44 am
If you are Bulk Billed then any change in Medicare rebate has zero impact on the patient. 85% of patients are Bulk Billed. Therefore only 15% who do not get the benefit of Bulk Billing are going to be impacted and that 15% are highly unlikely to be ALP voters.
The Greens can bitch all they want but they will not gain government alone.
Fess
I doubt that there has ever been one. So this could be a first.
It’s not only about Labor winning either. It could well be that WA decides whether the Libs end up as a minority government.
Go the “sandgropers”.
I’ve been getting some interesting feedback from my immediate circle.
On superannuation from Liberal (people who hand out HTV’s for the libs, seriously) co-workers there is real anger and a with to punish over the super changes. ALP’s policy is seen as more fair, raising about the same revenue, and easy to understand. Libs as complex, retrospective, and taking their base for granted. changes to the transition to retirement and the $500k lifetime cap are hated.
And on NBN. My pensioner mum has had issues getting connected and doing a lot more reading on the NBN policies. More she learns the darker she is on Malcolm.
Now, not all these people will t preference the ALP over the Libs on the day, but the Libs aren’t getting their primary and associated funding.
DTT – I think you’re revealing your age a bit here.
compact crank @ #99 Thursday, May 19, 2016 at 9:17 am
Thank you for your kind attention. I’m off to read Mein Kampft today for some inspration.
Toodles
Daretotread
Inner city Melb house prices r crazy for any developable site. We live 15 km from the city and massive beautiful houses in perfect condition around us r being sold up for 2-3 million (they would have been u der 1$ Million 5 years ago) and blocks of units/apartments r going up. We were going to extend our house but it just won’t b worth it as if we sell (which may happen in the next 5-10 years) it will b just demolished…
Very friendly place when I visited Queenstown years ago. Lots of free drinks after hours in one pub with the publican & some locals (including a copper) after plenty of free ones from the publican of the pub down the road. Tasmanians seemed to really warm to you when they found out you were not from Melbourne or Sydney 🙂
One can hardly blame the Greens for exploiting a stupid mistake by a Labor member in an effort to get one of their own into the House.
markjs @ 68
The Dutton remarks don’t sound like Crosby/Textor to me ..too crass ..too obvious ..too soon in the campaign.
——————————————
You may be right about that.
The possibility that it was an attempt to distract from scandals being exposed within Borderforce is the best explanation at the moment.
Can’t see Borderforce being found to be corrupt playing out well for Dutton or the government.
Virtualkat
My friend just sold her parents’ home (deceased estate) in Northcote for around 1 million to people who removed the old weatherboard to build a new big family home. I guess it may depend where Feeney’s ppty is located and land size, but 2.3 mill seems on the high side.
Markjs
Tones playing the long game is why I think that he would have no problems with that lonesome photo of him giving out election pamphlets at the ferry dock: he probably deliberately set it up that way. I’m sure he thinks such imagery can be later deployed to burnish his legend as a Churchillian voice in the wilderness, poised for a triumphant return when his party sees the folly of getting rid of him. Gawd I hope he’s dreaming…
https://delimiter.com.au/2016/05/16/no-gigabit-demand-australian-continues-nbn-election-attack/
Labor needs to up the anti on full fibre rollout of NBN and truelly call Australia, the Gigabit Nation.
And not the Backwater Nation.
David Crowe
26m26 minutes ago
David Crowe @CroweDM
A big move by Labor on health today. $2.4bn to restore increases in Medicare rebates. Has AMA on side. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/federal-election-2016/federal-election-2016-bill-shortens-24bn-relief-for-patients/news-story/8c6475bba2eabb6502666b1640dde753#itm=taus%7Cnews%7Caus_authors_index%7C2%7Cauthors_storyBlock_headline%7CDavid_Crowe%7Cindex%7Cauthor&itmt=1463612590730 … #ausvotes
Can someone explain to me why the @#$% a school (business) such as this receives a cent of government funding? (& I’m referring to the faux ivy league chinese campus rather than the sacking of the teachers).
Surely a means test for private school funding (i.e. any school with annual fees exceeding $5K/year does not receive government funding, or sliding scale reduction in in per student funding cutting in for fees between $2.5 and 8K). The catholic and other minor private school lobby would be on board if it meant they got more per student funding, and the elite schools can fend for themselves. This is massive upper middle class welfare.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/haileybury-teachers-sacked-from-chinese-campus-allege-vce-deception-20160510-gos08o.html .
I also think there’s a case for any elite school receiving government funding needing to provide 20% of places to low income and disadvantages background scholarship kids. That’d sort them out very quickly as many of the parents sending kids to those schools do so to quarantine their tristans and isobels from the haidyens and montanas. it would become ‘a thing’ in elite circles to boast that your school didn’t receive fed gov funding – which would be code for saying ‘we a re truly elite’ .
Another ‘no funding for you’ criteria could be schools charging more than $500 for school excursions/camps. Most of the elite schools now do overseas school camps costing $5-10K+ extra which are about boasting rights for parents rather than any educational benefit (“Tristan’s going snow leopard spotting in the Himalayas next week. He’ll have three Sherpas to carry all his gear, but I hear they’re really roughing it. Isobel’s off to the Cayman Islands as part of her economics & commerce unit”).
“One can hardly blame the Greens for exploiting a stupid mistake by a Labor member in an effort to get one of their own into the House.”
I have no problem with Labor having to answer for this one, especially Feeney himself, if for no other reason than for being such a political idiot.
I do think Shorten handled it about as well as he could have, and given that no party (including the Greens) is going to be squeaky clean on conflicts of interest and failure to keep admin details fully updated, then I doubt it will have much legs or impact.
“Isobel’s off to the Cayman Islands as part of her economics & commerce unit”
Will Malcom be celebrity the tour guide?
Re CC@9:20AM.
The freeze on Medicare rebates will put pressure on GPs and Medical practices to abandon bulk billing for ever more patients. I believe that this is the Government’s intention – a copayment by slealth.
34m34 minutes ago
Sky News Australia @SkyNewsAust
The AMA President says ‘it’s very good news for patients’ if Labor is elected & lift the Medicare rebate freeze. http://snpy.tv/1stweWP
CC
I could be wrong but that 85% bulk billing just doesn’t sound right to me. It seems way too high. But apart from that, how long do you think doctors are going to keep bulk billing if the government keeps squeezing their income from that source?
This is a hot potato for the Liberals and with the doctors also campaigning against them it is bound to bite. The only question is how much?
Pegasus..
I don’t want to get into a flame war with you ..but you have accused me of lying on a public forum.. so please withdraw your accusation or reproduce the alleged lie..
..thank you..
Jobs and growth an empty slogan full of attacks and lies.
Deloitte Access Econ
30m
Deloitte Access Econ @D_AccessEcon
Wage price growth lower than during #GFC & at 0.4% its the lowest increase since series began @ABSstats
Kevin’s figures are almost a mirror image of the 1990 election outcome.
Interesting at that election the Democrats got 12% and the Greens 2 and a bit %
zoidlord
Thursday, May 19, 2016 at 9:33 am
The ALP has not committed to going back to full FTTP and can’t afford it.
Matthew Knott @KnottMatthew
Peter Dutton: We have turned back 26 boats #ausvotes
Cranky yes they did and yes we can, we cannot afford NOT TOO.
Perhaps those Feeney tenants can be persuaded to put a similar sized notice in their front yard to say:
“Greens are against political parties accepting donations for big business ..but THEY accepted the largest single business donation of $1.6,000,000.00”
..you know, for balance..
“jobs and growth” has got be such a joke that even the letters page of the heraldsun is full of punters making funny about a made up character called Jobson Grothe. That’s why turnbull has donned the metaphorical budgie smugglers of “Stop the Boats”. Surely it is time cartoonists started drawing him with red speedos?
Dutton is sounding and looking like Heidrich Himmler (just add little glasses and a sleazy mo – it’s uncanny) – he needs to be sacked. After yesterday, I’ll bet they get Morrison back onto “Boats” asap during the campaign.
Labor started the freeze on the MBS rebate when Tanya Plibersek was health minister in 2013, saving $664m over four years.
So let’s get this right – it’s OK for ALP to freeze it but if the LNP do it it’s bad? FFS.
Josh Taylor
1m1 minute ago
Josh Taylor @joshgnosis
Hadley says Turnbull has “let Dutton off the leash” because he knows that will win the election.
Cranky is it ok for LNP to cut all the services (like they are cutting massively with legal aid, aid programs, education programs, health etc), but Labor cannot cut some?
Steve777
Thursday, May 19, 2016 at 9:37 am
The evidence of increased Bulk Billing Rates under the ongoing freeze started by the ALP are significantly at odds with your contention.
Josh Taylor @joshgnosis
“The left is in control of Bill Shorten,” Dutton delcares.
Umm LNP are in power, is he suggesting that Turnbull hand over the government to ALP?
Discrimation at its best!
Richard Denniss
1m
Richard Denniss @RDNS_TAI
So let me get this right: the Immigration Minister thinks immigrants ‘take Aussie jobs’ but only if the immigrants are illiterate? #auspol
Well maybe I should sue the goverment for discrimination.
zoidlord
More like stupidity
Darn @ 8.34 re WA seats (wish I could get the numbered posts back)….my thoughts for what they are worth from this side of the Rabbit Proof….I wonder what other Perth-based PBers feel?………….
It is a matter of conjecture (oviously)how many seats Labor can win in WA. However, starting from the bottom up, they hold a bare minimum of 3 seats at the moment and should hold these. The candidate for Perth, for instance, already has his face around the electorate on bill boards and the like and I have not seen anything of the Liberal’s candidate to date. While the demographics may be going against Labor a bit in Perth, it held in 2013 and was one the Libs thought they could win. If Labor can’t win Freo they might as well give up, while the 3rd seat south of the river should also be returned. Next comes Burt, a new seat and is nominally Labor I would think and the showing in the last by-election in that Armadale area was good for Labor. This is a seat Labor should take. After this it is all a matter of margins and the mood of the electorate closer to the election. My guess is that there are possibly 2 or 3 more seats in play which, if Labor is gain office, they must win. So my uneducated total is 3 beyond the current + Burt + 2 others – so I guess this tallies 3/15 now to 7/16 after the election. However, things are very fluid over here at the moment. Barnett and the Liberals are are really struggling and if the electorate is in the mood to really bash the LNP then seats like Swan which has a margin of 5% for the Libs is on the cards. William’s Tracker is much more accurate than my thoughts but if Labor can’t improve here this time around then I guess they will not win office and will not deserve to. At the moment I can’t work out whether the mortgage belt is hurting all that much yet. Interest rates are down and petrol is cheap. On the other hand, the FIFO mob are very subdued and the rate of building and construction sure ain’t what it used to be.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-17/british-spymaster-fears-eu-has-run-its-historical-course-warns-populist-uprising
While I think Williams figures are a little conservative for Labor I am struggling to get them to a majority.
Usingin Williams figures plus a little more swing to labor and anony greens calculator I am coming up with:
Coalition 73
Labor 71
Greens 2 (I am now factoring Batman in as Green)
4 Independents – Wilkie, Katter, McGowan and a Xenophon. I do not think Windsor will make it.
This Medicare stuff has a bit of the same feel as workchoices did for me. It’s just so easy to mount a scare campaign against it and unless the Liberals are prepared to scrap the policy there is no real defence against it that I can see.
I think Labor will be hammering this for all they’re worth in the last couple of weeks.
Oh dear. Judging from twitter, Dutton is having a grand old time on 2gb with Hadley beating down on refugees and saying that Shorten cant control his own party, how is he going to control our borders.
Fmd i am so over this shit. This election campaign period could not have been any worse than if Abbott were still PM. Turnbull has really turned out to be the worst of the worst, by going down this path with his so called outstanding immigration minister.
compact crank @ #133 Thursday, May 19, 2016 at 9:48 am
Labor have excellent credentials in health. The LNP don’t rate. Simple. The best biut is that if the LNP ever campaign on health they are effectively campaigning for Labor. This reflects more than 50 years of pro-active health policy and campaign effort from Labor. The LNP will never catch up. In fact, they don’t want to catch up. They want to IPA the whole thing. Good luck with that. The LNP and health are virtual opposites.
@ Markjs
I hope they don’t print incorrect statements like that.
Primarily, because it was a donation from an individual, not “for[sic] big business”.
But additionally, your use of 1.6,000,000 instead of the correct 1,600,000 is a factual error deliberately designed to make the number look 10 times as big as it actually is, and the addition of cents at the end, whilst not factually incorrect, is designed to make the number look an additional 100 times bigger.
Do you mean $1,600,000?
I’m thinking Truffles has lost what little control he had over their election campaign..
..if Dutton’s remarks were a deliberate and official tactic ..I haven’t heard any follow-up from senior Liberals this morning ..Dutton is doing the rounds of the redneck loudspeakers ..but the only other Liberal person I’ve heard is Amanda Vanstone, who was trying to put a positive spin on Dutton’s racism..
..sounding like a complete fizzer if it IS an official scare-campaign..
So now the Libs are prepared to talk about “border matters” in detail. What happened to keeping it all quiet?
Meher
WTTE “their kids are average or above but their attitude n parents attitude is often unhelpful”
And your evidence for this naive BS is ………,
Dutton is at it again, this time with Hadley:
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2016/may/19/australian-election-2016-david-feeney-faces-more-questions-over-investment-portfolio-politics-live?page=with:block-573cfb3ae4b094bc5b17a558&CMP=share_btn_tw#block-573cfb3ae4b094bc5b17a558