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.
The Backburner
20 MAY 2016 – 3:26 PM UPDATED 1 HOUR AGO
Greens leader Richard Di Natale has suffered a mild injury while experiencing a sudden and dramatic fall from his moral high ground.
Mr Di Natale came under fire when it was revealed he had failed to declare a farm he owned in the same week the Greens attacked Labor MP David Feeney over undeclared property interests, with Greens MP Adam Bandt going as far as to call for Feeney’s resignation.
“While luckily I am not seriously injured, the shock of the fall has been devastating,” Mr Di Natale told The Backburner.
“The Greens have been living on the moral high ground for quite some time and we never anticipated we would ever come down off it, and certainly not as suddenly as this.
“We are deeply chastened by this turn of events and make a solemn promise to the voters to never, ever be caught doing this sort of thing again.
“My actions were inexcusable, but I would like to add in my defence that both the farm and the au pairs themselves were entirely carbon neutral, and their operation and employment didn’t violate any UN human rights guidelines, so we’re all good in that respect.”
Greens voters have been shaken up by the revelation, with some saying the appeal of the party has disappeared entirely:
“As a Greens voter this is the worst possible outcome – even us not getting in at all is way better, then we at least still get to feel smug about our theoretical policies.
“If I don’t get to look down at my Labor voting friends from my environmentally-sustainable high horse I may as well just be voting Labor. It’s no fun if I don’t get to be morally scrupulous.
“Our only hope here now is that Labor forgets to declare something even bigger and that Dutton does one more press conference this week, we might just slip under the radar.”
I self au pair….think of it as rolling my own…
ruawake @ #1601 Friday, May 20, 2016 at 4:51 pm
Backburner should have added that no Liberal politicians were harmed in the making of this commercial.
Yes. He said “Jobs and growth”.
The Backburner
Too funny – thanks ru
I have to agree. Although I have found her a tad rosy eyed in regard to Turnbull, she is one of the better one’s.
My take on Will Anderson’s piece in the Guardian on dead cats .
The thing to notice here is that the journalists are all so basically useless that they cannot help themselves but to discuss, point to, hold up for extended viewing, and publicly eviscerate, dismember and carry out an autopsy on the dead cat. They are Crosby/Textors willing patsies, comrades in arms and mouthpieces, doing their bit to subvert Australia’s democracy, and protect an incompetent government.
Observe Will here, in this piece, preening himself about being so clever as to know that he is being fooled and subverted, but not actually doing his job, of informing the Australian people as to what is actually going on, but rather holding the dead cat up for admiration.
You, Will and the whole of the Canberra Press Gallery are a mob of prejudiced, group thinking, self congratulatory lickspittles, with no integrity, and an attention span measured in minutes, rather than the weeks, months and years that are required. You still haven’t got over your fawning admiration for the great Mal, the emperor in his own backyard, who stands naked, revealed in all of his puny, ineffectual, sunken-chested, gutless glory.
I could never get enough of my kids… but now the’re teenagers 🙂
rua
cracker!
I au pair but I don’t inhale.
question @ #1608 Friday, May 20, 2016 at 4:57 pm
Yes….mine are fully-fledged too and well on the wing….
CC used ‘au pairs’ – I rest my case re: RDN sounding like an elitist wanker using that term.
My wife and I have been ‘lucky’ (well, we planned it by planning a mortgage based on a single income and higher interest rates, so we now have no mortgage and can work part time or from home and live in a community where child minding is shared over several families from time to time and kids can now get themselves to and from school).
We could afford to juggle kids and work through to the teen years so one or both of us is present most of the time as needed. if we’d chosen a different lifestyle we may have needed paid kid sitters/wranglers, but would never have used the term ‘au pair’ though.
Adrian
[The members often amazed me…]
I remember when we just had the IRT (or it’s predecessor).
A Fijian Indian guy was our bloke.
His father was the Fijian HC. They didn’t go home.
RHwombat – I really like Owler … shame he has to step down
What a noisy week in politics which in the end the undecideds will go “a pox on both your houses”. A winner NXT and any other protest party.
BW@1610: Bluey au pairs octuples?
rhw
lol
The OH&S issues for occie au pairs tend to constrict the supply side.
If people have not noticed, Cormann is the omnibus Liberal LNP spokesperson on the ABC. His job is to repeat slogans regardless of any question asked.
He’s basically like the bung you put in an overflowing sewerage outlet. The Libs think they get nohing but shit from the ABC. So they’ve appointed Cormann to block the pipes till after the election.
Bugger. pairs doesn’t work.
It would be unconscionable for the ALP to preference the Libs ahead of X. Don’t do it!
I just saw the Fed Police Commissioner speaking on TV. The guy looks and sounds dumber that Dutton. Unbelievable!
I had been wondering how the tax cuts could possibly be done administratively. Even if there was a way it wouldve been extremely bad practice and highly disrespectful of Parliament.
[I au pair but I don’t inhale.]
I have a bit of experience in these.
Nieces who did ‘nannying’ and got a free move from Brisbane to Edinburgh.
Another an ‘Al Jazzera’ Airlines cabin crewer . They get a shared flat in Dubai, travel allowances and just a $150 a week pay.
Yabba88
Have you seen Will Anderson perform recently? He despises Turnbull. Will is too Green for mine but a wonderful observer of life and about as Left as you can be in the MSM.
Labor candidates in Hindmarsh (Steve Geoganas), Boothby (Mark Ward) and Sturt (Matt Loader) are all very good men who would represent their constituents very well.
It’s so sad the the Murdoch muck-rakers will deny these people the chance to show their wares.
Darn @1597
That was what I was thinking anyway. Surely NXT is a much better party to preference over the Libs. I’d imagine the Labor voters in SA would be thinking that already.
Kinda enjoying the tweets by this guy:
https://twitter.com/MackDog2341
Strangely we called them Au Pairs because they Register on Au Pair World and other websites looking for work as Au Pairs.
Cormann is the campaign spokesperson for the Liberal Party during the election campaign. That’s why you see him doing a lot of media. Wong is the campaign spokesperson for the Labor Party.
Last week’s podcast by Taylor and Murphy discuss the role of a campaign spokesperson. In it they interviewed both Cormann and Wong. The Cormann interview was notable for him sticking very much to message (jobs and growth in every answer). Wong did actually answer the questions.
Not to worry. Di Natale knows all about this stuff and how it can be fixed: family dinners.
http://www.theage.com.au/business/workplace-relations/major-hotel-chains-shortchange-housekeepers-tens-of-thousands-of-dollars-investigation-finds-20160520-gozkbv.html
Tell us what you think, Yabba! 🙂
(Actually – I whole-hearted agree – its as if they think their own stupidity is a sign of cleverness)
Anyone know why the comments don’t refresh as they happen when you’re on here using a mobile? Then every 15-30 minutes you get a whole new page or so. Happens a bit on laptop as well, but this is far worse. It’s so frustrating.
Germans were by far the best. Koreans do not know how to clean or drive. French and 19 – sacre bleu. And now we have a global network of daughters to visit and come back and visit us.
Solar @ 5.07
Colvin was the guy behind the dobbing in of the Bali Nine to the Indonesian police. Why they did it has never been satisfactorily explained. My thinking has always been that it was done because the AFP were sick of the ‘light’ sentences being handed to drug smugglers in Australian courts.
If that’s right, Colvin clearly fancies himself as a ‘player’ and these NBN raids were done with a political purpose in mind. My money is very much on an Abbott connection. It has always been passing strange to me that the AFP suddenly pulled their collective fingers out over the Slipper diaries once Brough and Roy were shown to be involved in the Turnbull backstabbing.
In these raids, as so many have pointed out, the biggest winner is Labor. Certainly, the AFP have solved Labor’s biggest problem with fighting for the Real NBN – which is how to explain the technical differences without nine punters out of 10 switching off and moving away before the first 20 words were out.
Now, the punters have something they can grasp – the argument that if Fraudband was fine and dandy, why the necessity to set the AFP dogs going? Labor of course benefits. But Abbott really benefits through undermining Turnbull.
Burgey
Happens to me as well
CC
[Germans were by far the best.]
It was a stand out thing in the 80’s. The Western variety under 30 all spoke English.
Ch 10 5pm news started with AFP and NBN, including background of the “leaks” showing what was wrong with Turnbull’s version of the NBN. Good coverage of Shorten, also of Turnbull (with nose in air) saying “nothing to do with me”.
I should add to my 5.25 post that Colvin would have understood the impact of conducting these raids in such a public way at this point in the election campaign. He could easily wait another six or seven weeks, given how long the AFP take to deal with anything. This was a political intervention pure and simple.
And while it benefits Labor in this instance, it is a hugely worrying thing that the AFP are playing politics in such a patently obvious and impactful way. If Labor get in Colvin should go and the AFP needs a big clean out so it goes back to being more like a servant of the public and not of Liberal Party interests.
Cormann was abysmal on ABC774 this afternoon. Its time Labor started focusing right in on the Libs “Jobs & Growth” slogan with some parodies. If Raf Epstein can make it bleedingly obvious we have a Lib Gov that presides over less work and a stagnating economy then its time Labor had a serious go at it too. Far too gentle on this stuff so far, I reckon.
Yabba, if you’re going to have a spray, best get the author correct, assuming you were referring to the Will Woodward article http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/20/any-election-involving-crosby-textor-will-include-dead-cats-and-weve-just-been-thrown-one
TPOF
I have not been following the msm today, but did manage to see front page of Herald Sun. COPS RAID LABOR. The murdoch press got the bloody headline they wanted. shall we ever see another headline. what does TURNBULL have to hide?
Hmmm, yes well observed – Sales interview with Cormann and Burke last night …
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Why did Burke get interrupted by Sales 10 times & Cormann 0? Why did she let Cormann interrupt a further 8 times? #abc730
Does Labor have an environment shadow minister or is it lumped under “Industrial Relations” like everything else? Talk about focusing on the small issues. How many people need to die in next summer’s bushfires before realisation is vaguely grasped that we might have an environment issue?
Fans of the Minister for Finance would appreciate the most recent Clarke and Dawes episode where the interviewer is asking a voter about current issues in politics – “When they talk about bracket creep what are they talking about?”
A: “Mattias Cormann?”
Vogon – Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I am hopeless with names, as is clearly obvious. Will Woodward it is. Anderson also has an a, an r and a d in it, so its an understandable mistake. They are really almost the same, aren’t they.
Hmmm. This is interesting
Development #afpraids coming up #thelatest. Claims an NBN employee breached parliamentary privilege (possible jail term) (@ljayes)
This is quite good: (5 mins)
http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/story-hunters/LE1551H005S00#playing
Rossmore @ 5.31
Hmm. Went back and read the transcript. What was really worrying was not even that Sales was interrupting but that she and Cormann were playing tag team interrupting until the end when she finally asked Cormann to let Tony Burke finish. And then Burke gave it to Cormann right between the eyes, which was great to read.
It’s a good thing that nobody actually watches this stuff. It only gets reported when there is a major gaffe or where relevant to big news of the day. In this case, only Burke’s comments re the AFP raids and how the AFP have not been investigating any other referrals with the same alacrity got repeated.
“And while it benefits Labor in this instance, it is a hugely worrying thing that the AFP are playing politics in such a patently obvious and impactful way.”
Mmm. ARE Labor benefitting from it? Yes, we, the converted are all outraged, but on a broader level I’m not sure enough go beyond the “Police raid ALP, ALP bad” level, for it be anything other than a “Lib win” so far. 🙁
Far too many seem to be buying “the minister didn’t tell us to do it” line, just because Colvin is AFP. The line is probably true, but that doesn’t mean the minister didn’t tell the NBN to tell the AFP to do it.
It is, indeed, a hugely worrying thing when such events occur. Yes, Dreyfus has been good (but it was a pity it was Conroy who was hunted, because no-one believes him anyway) . Good to see Wong and Albanese spending some time on it too.
But I’m far from sure the message has really got much past the political aficionados so far.
Jayes gets little in the way of answers.