BludgerTrack is now updated with all of the federal polling published over the past few days, results of which are displayed at the bottom of this post. As has been the case since at least the start of the campaign period, the tracker is resolute in recording an effective dead heat on two-party preferred, with the seat projection continuing to point towards a slender absolute majority for the Coalition. The latest addition to the aggregate is the weekly reading of Essential Research’s fortnightly rolling aggregate, which echoes BludgerTrack in coming in at 50-50 on two-party preferred. This follows a two-point movement the previous week that turned a 51-49 Coalition deficit into a 51-49 Coalition lead. On the primary vote, the Coalition is steady at 41%, Labor is up one to 36%, the Greens are up one to 9%, and the Nick Xenophon Team is steady on 4%.
Further questions offer some encouragement for Bill Shorten with respect to perceptions of the two leaders during the campaign, although I wonder how good respondents are at isolating that period specifically. The results find 20% saying they have become more favourable towards Shorten versus 21% for less favourable, but these are much better than Malcolm Turnbull’s respective figures of 7% and 33%. Another dose of Essential’s “party trust to handle issues” records a big drop in the Coalition’s lead on managing the economy since a month ago, down from 20% to 12%, with most other measures remaining fairly stable. An occasional question on climate change records a four point drop since March in those attributing it to human activity to 59%, and a one point increase in those favouring the alternative option of it being “a normal fluctuation in the earth’s climate” to 28%. Most of the survey period was before large parts of Sydney’s northern beaches crumbled into the sea. Further questions confirm the impression that the electorate has been less than fully switched on during the first half of the campaign marathon, with only 14% claiming to have shown a lot of interest in the campaign, compared with 39% for some interest, 27% for very little interest and 18% for no interest.
Federal election bits and pieces:
• Labor’s candidate in Malcolm Turnbull’s seat of Wentworth, Evan Hughes, has provided Fairfax with results of a ReachTEL poll he commissioned showing a 10% swing against Turnbull, reducing his margin from 18% to 8%. The poll was conducted last Tuesday from a sample of 626.
• Steven Scott of the Courier-Mail reports Labor optimism about the regional Queensland seats of Capricornia and Herbert is not matched for the state’s capital. The northern suburbs seat of Petrie, held by the LNP on a margin of 0.5%, is identified as a seat where Labor is falling short. A similar prognosis was offered in my own paywalled article in Crikey on Thursday.
• More of my words of wisdom on the campaign can be found on a podcast for The Conversation, and in a review of northern Tasmania’s flood-stricken marginal seats in a paywalled Crikey article yesterday.
• Mark the Ballot tracks Sportsbet’s win probabilities for all 150 electorates to the start of the campaign. Sportsbet has substantially revised its odds over the course of the campaign in favour of the Liberals in Banks, Hindmarsh and Lyons, the Liberal National Party in Leichhardt, the Greens in Batman, Labor in Cowan, and Bob Katter in Kennedy.
• Fairfax reports the Victorian Liberal Party’s administration committee discussed, but ultimately decided against, disendorsing McEwen candidate Chris Jermyn following his struggles before the news cameras as he gatecrashed a Bill Shorten event in Sunbury last weekend.
• An alleged promise by South Australian property developer Roostam Sadri to donate $500,000 to the Liberal Democratic Party in exchange for the top position on its South Australian Senate ticket has been referred to police by the Australian Electoral Commission, as reported yesterday by Josh Taylor of Crikey. This followed last week’s publication by Fairfax of an apparent written agreement to that effect. Sadri denies having paid such an amount, or that there was ever a “formal agreement”. The section of the Electoral Act pertaining to bribery offences provides, with helpful exactitude, that “a person shall not ask for, receive or obtain, or offer or agree to ask for, or receive or obtain, any property or benefit of any kind, whether for the same or any other person, on an understanding that the order in which the names of candidates nominated for election to the Senate whose names are included in a group in accordance with section 168 appear on a ballot paper will, in any manner, be influenced or affected”. Graeme Orr of the University of Queensland’s TC Beirne School of Law notes that Section 362 of the Act states that candidates forfeit their seats if involved in bribery, and that this requires only the civil rather than the criminal standard of proof. This could equally apply to David Leyonhjelm’s bid for re-election in New South Wales as to Roostam Sadri’s run in South Australia, if the Fairfax report’s assertion that Leyonhjelm “considered entering” an agreement was substantiated.
Further afield:
• The Northern Territory News offers a reminder that a territory election looms on August 27, and the Northern Territory News offers a helpful reminder with a Mediareach poll of 400 respondents in the Alice Springs electorates of Araluen and Braitling. The pollster appears to have failed to ask a follow-up question to prompt the 23% undecided, rendering it of little value, but it’s presumably instructive that less than 40% of decided respondents said they would vote for the Country Liberal Party, compared with 68% at the 2012 election.
• The Sydney Morning Herald reports the NSW Electoral Commission is investigating allegations of vote-rigging during Labor’s American primary-style “community preselection” process for the seat of Ballina ahead of last year’s state election. It is alleged that a party official used details on enrolled voters from the party’s database to fraudulently vote on their behalf during the online ballot, although the unnamed official is quoted saying he had merely “played along” when asked to do so by persons unidentified. The proposed beneficiary was the favoured candidate of head office and the ultimate victor in the preselection, Paul Spooner, with no suggestion that Spooner himself was involved. The formerly Nationals-held seat went on to be won by the Greens.
Markijs flies over, shits all over everyone, flies off.
Classic seagull.*
*Sea gulls are notorious for their ectoparasite load, aka lice.
“Well can we have the benefit of your informed opinion?”
I don’t have an informed opinion on the Hornsby police shooting ..neither does anyone else on here..
Labor hasn’t moved to the left on tax issues since the 1980s. In the 1980s, when company and top marginal income tax rates were much higher than they are today, Labor favoured tax cuts. In 2016, when company and top marginal tax rates are already low, and most companies have average tax rates lower than the headline rate, and high income earners are able to shelter much of their income from the top marginal rate through the use of gamily trusts, capital gains and negative gearing tax concessions, and superannuation tax concessions, Labor opposes cuts to the tax rates. That is not a move to the left; it’s a recognition that the circumstances are very different now.
Boerwar..
Thanks for the personal endorsement ..hope it’s set you up for the rest of the day.. 😉
Commentary on Twitter is near 100% praise and admiration for Jane Garrett after her resignation as Victorian Emergency Services minister. It’s the opposite for Daniel Andrews, who is being painted as the villain in the CFA saga.
Being polled doesn’t mean anything’s going to be released – a lot of the polling appears to be commissioned by parties and candidates and is thus kept in house.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/opinion/labors-nbn-silence/news-story/4c4c8f774c2322654b264089c3c34e9e
What a helpful fellow he is.
markjs @ #1352 Friday, June 10, 2016 at 11:44 am
Well you are a former mental health nurse IIRC so you have some knowledge of how to deal with mentally ill people and practical experience.
There was video of the Hornsby incident and eyewitness accounts in the SMH. Not perfect information, but better than we usually get soon after such events.
triton @ #1355 Friday, June 10, 2016 at 11:48 am
I like and greatly respect both of them.
This is a terribly unfortunate state of affairs which I wish could have been avoided.
There has to be a solution that can be reached by negotiation. From all I have read, there is a lot of mis-information out there spread by the Libs and that well known shit-sheet the Herald Scum. Strip that away and get to the underlying issues and then negotiate a solution.
M
Apart from your shitting all over everyone behaviour you claim total ignorance. Despite this you just know with 100% certainty that everyone is as ignorant as you.
This is typical seagull projection.
cupidstunt @ #1357 Friday, June 10, 2016 at 11:51 am
That is a good article by Dr Marke Gregory who is very pro FTTP. It surprises me that Rupert allows it to be published.
b
Mr Andrews should have been in town instead of o/s.
He should have known that the ‘rules’ are different during elections.
He should have known that the raving right nut bag element of the CFA was loaded for bear and just waiting for the right moment to discharge their stuff.
He should have known that the paid/volunteer firey interface was volatile.
Chestnuts meet fire.
Bemused
I thought id put the article on here for comment.
>The Vic Labor Emerg Services Minister resigning is a free kick in front of goal for the Libs.
Libs be licking their lips at picking up Bendigo now and McEwen (if their candidate wasn’t a dill)
Big country backlash against Andrews and his CFA folly … don’t know how it will play out in Metro Melb
Someone asked: Who’s Billy Lane?
He was of course the British-born journalist and socialist who fired up the infant union movement in Australia. An advocate of White Auustralia, he is quoted by Hal G. P. Colebatch in The Spectator as having written: “We invite men of all nations, except Chinese, to enrol themselves [in the Miners’ Protection League].” A woman, Lane wrote, should never openly express sexuality, since this might lead her to ‘the most depraved and sensuous race on earth – the yellows’. Writing in The Worker, Lane advised: “I’d sooner see a daughter of mine dead in her coffin than kissing one of them on the mouth or nursing a little coffee-coloured brat that she was mother to.”
Lane was one of the leaders of the New Australia colony in Paraguay but became disillusioned with socialism and ended his days as a conservative newspaper editor in New Zealand.
That The Spectator can run this sort of stuff as evidence that the modern Labor Party is hypocritical in accusing others of xenophobia smacks of gutter journalism of the worst kind.
bob katter’s hat @ #1365 Friday, June 10, 2016 at 12:07 pm
From calls I have heard on radio, a lot of CFA people are just bewildered and don’t really know what is going on.
Just how that will play out I have no idea.
It seems to me we are long overdue to have the services amalgamated as happened with ambulances. Having incompatible fittings, communications etc are just inexcusable. The full-timers and volunteers need to work seamlessly together and that should not preclude volunteers taking command when appropriate.
C@t – How so?
Because I am still angry with the Greens about the whole Malaysia solution affair.
BK
Oval? Which Oval?
Jacka – presumed I knew what the weather would be.
I knew it would be cold, I didnt expect it to be miserably dark and constantly cold and wet. A little sun in the middle of the day and temps rising to 13 or 14 is all I ask.
Rob Oakeshot confirms he will contest election
I confirm I have nominated to be the Federal Member for Cowper in the 45th Parliament. To achieve this, I ask for the support of the communities of Coffs Harbour, Bellingen, Nambucca, Kempsey and the Macleay, and my home town of Port Macquarie at the ballot on July 2.
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2016/jun/10/australian-election-2016-labor-to-announce-support-for-cuts-to-family-payments-politics-live
bemused @ #1347 Friday, June 10, 2016 at 11:27 am
Thanks for the link Bemused.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/federal-election-2016-former-mp-rob-oakeshott-to-stand-for-parliament-20160609-gpfxxn.html
Living in Queensland I have no idea what is driving the dispute in Victoria re the CFA.
A question therefor to others more informed.
Is this dispute not pitting full time CFA firies against CFA volunteers ? Would not they all live in the same communities, drink at the same pub, shop at the same shops and perhaps at the grassroots level communicate far better than the MSM etc are playing it out ?
Cheers.
Barney in Mt Gambier
[The apparent temperature at my house been above 32° for 200 days]
You can take your 32°, your malaria and zika and typhoid and encephalitis and F off.
Its midday and 5° FFS.
I can’t remember the last time a minister resigned over principle. Good on her for that but I can’t help thinking it could have waited until after the election.
gecko @ #1370 Friday, June 10, 2016 at 12:19 pm
Read a few articles talking about it before one had the brains to link to it. That was Rob Burgess.
simon katich @ #1373 Friday, June 10, 2016 at 12:27 pm
28 and balmy here in the Gulf of Thailand. (Just sayin’) 🙂
Simon Katich
#1373 Friday, June 10, 2016 at 12:27 pm
Barney in Mt Gambier
It’s 9:30 am and nice pleasant 30°. 😉
Boerwar..
1) I haven’t “shitted all over everyone” as you so picturesquely put it. I happen to feel very strongly about this issue & resent armchair critics who have blithely presented hypothetical scenarios of the sad events which occurred yesterday ..based on, at best, conflicting evidence & poor quality, out of context video ..and then confidently put forward un-informed opinions as to how they would have dealt with the life-threatening situation so much better than those police officers..
2) The only thing I know is that I am “ignorant” of the facts of what occurred yesterday ..as is everyone who commented yesterday. In fact, the conflicting information made everyone worse than ignorant ..it made us ill-informed. Couple of examples of this were, a) the un-substantiated report of what the unfortunate man was alleged to have shouted at some stage ..I think it was “Allah Akbar!!” and b) the weapon he is alleged to have held ..confidently described as “a pair of scissors” and “a carving knife”
3) I have been involved in two life-threatening incidents involving mentally un-stable individuals ..one involved a seriously disturbed young man who had completed dismantled his washing machine and was threatening me & my colleague with the exposed live wires. The second involved a woman with schizophrenia who had barricaded herself in her unit & was threatening to cut her own throat with a carving knife. The Star Force was called to assist with this poor woman.
In both cases we were able to diffuse them with verbal persuasion ..but, I can assure anyone really interested in these situations, that in the first example at least I was almost praying that the police would take the man out.. It was extremely dangerous for everyone involved & I still get occasional flash-backs. The young man suicided at home a few months later..
I’m not a “seagull” Boewar ..I’m a very experienced Mental Health nurse who actually understands how complex and difficult it is to deal with severely disturbed individuals with Schizophrenia ..and I refuse to judge police, who I have always found to be professional and caring when it comes to helping to manage mentally ill people in the community..
So you can stick your personally disparaging remarks up Bluey’s back passage..
diogenes @ #1374 Friday, June 10, 2016 at 12:28 pm
That would have just left it festering away.
It was a no-win situation for Labor.
I have every confidence we will see Ms Garrett back in Cabinet and maybe even as Premier one day. She is good value. And so is Dan Andrews.
Boerwar
Do you always have to be so nasty to those you don’t agree with?
Go and talk to your alter ego Bluey.
Bemused – I wonder if her local branch will be as charitable.
Maybe some Victorians can confirm or deny the memory I have of there being a very strong extreme right wing group in control of the CFA in Victoria . I’m sure I read about it a few years (or maybe decades!) ago and I’m not sure if it is still the case. This could be at least a partial explanation as to why this issue has blown up at this time.
[He was of course the British-born journalist and socialist who fired up the infant union movement in Australia]
I always thought little tackers were poorly represented.
markjs @ #1378 Friday, June 10, 2016 at 12:32 pm
Goodness me you are a sensitive soul!
The electric exposed wires would have have been what, maybe 2 metres long? And you couldn’t stand at a safe distance?
And of course all premises have a main switch which would have cut off the electricity.
And somehow a woman threatening self harm poses a threat to others?
Seems you and the ‘Star Force’ actually did your jobs and full credit to you.
It was far better outcomes than the police achieve with their 9mm Glock therapy.
kevin-one-seven @ #1381 Friday, June 10, 2016 at 12:38 pm
In what way?
Both she and Dan Andrews are highly regarded in ALP ranks.
They had a serious difference of opinion and she has taken some time out. It will blow over.
Mark, you don’t have to be well-informed or to have been there to know that 4 people were shot yesterday, three of them completely innocent bystanders, by three police shooting at a man 5 metres distant, in a crowded shopping mall. One of the innocent bystanders was already screaming that she had been hit when more shots were then fired.
If the collateral damage factor alone doesn’t ring alarm bells, I don’t know what would. If asking how an agitated person with a knife ended up with a mass shooting by (supposedly) trained police officers is out of line, then I’d hate to see what you’d have said if someone was actually killed.
None of the above facts are disputed. None of the above questions are in any way exceptional.
We give police a special right to use firearms, and are entitled to assume they are trained in their use and in how to handle dangerous situations short of the use of lethal force.
@Markjs
‘Armchair critics’ is only something somebody says when they have a weak and pathetic answer in their reply.
D
A bit of free-ranging opinionating:
IMO, the firies stuff is part substance, part ideology, part rural/urban divide, part culture war and part local community power politics.
The machinations following each and every major wildfire provide a different window into these phenomena.
The ‘debate’ about control burns and biodiversity decimation provides another ‘window’.
IMO, at the core, you can sort of put together the elements of an imaginary hero who personifies the voluteer CFA:
1. knows more than scientists about fire behaviour and the response of biodiversity to fire.
2. hates authority, particularly that of the Big Smoke
3. is hardy, self-sufficient
4. is competent with machinery
5. gets along with his mates
6. has standing and respect in the local community by dint of what he does and what he says rather than the position he occupies
7. reflects dominant rural values of modestly being ready to help others for no monetary reward, particularly during a community crisis
8. will often be a member of a district family of note
9. will be head of the fire crew
10. will be liked because he is approachable and informal
11. can aspire to being an incident controller who really, truly, needs to be on the ball in fast moving crises.
You will note that none of the above fits with the idea of a centrally-controlled, rules-based, hierarchical, city-based, paid, anonymous fire fighting organisation.
IMO, Andrews does not have a chance if he continues to be the ‘cultural’ champion of the latter. It is men are from Mars and women are from Venus stuff.
“The electric exposed wires would have have been what, maybe 2 metres long? And you couldn’t stand at a safe distance?
And of course all premises have a main switch which would have cut off the electricity.
And somehow a woman threatening self harm poses a threat to others?”
..no f&%king idea!!..
BEMUSED – If she wants to resign on principle – good on her. I admire that. I really do. However, there is no point resigning on principle if there are no consequences and it’s just “time out”. I would admire it a lot more if she said she was not going to contest her seat at the next election.
I can relate to this guy at one level. Modern washing machines are designed for planned obsolescense, being basically made out of recycled Milo tins, and it’s really frustrating to have to fix the bloody things all the time.
Currently my washing machine has a busted lid safety switch, one of the water inlet valves is stuffed and I think the main drive bearing is also stuffed. It was working (in cold mode) until the main drive shat itself. Now I have to pull the whole thing down. Hasn’t been too much of an issue as we are a bit low on water and have been going to the laundromat.
What’s the panic? He’s just waiting for Jamie Packer to decide whether there’ll be a twin-tower casino on the site or a single tower. Jamie will let Dimples know when he’s good and ready.
M
You flew over shat all over everything on the basis that everyone has to be as ignorant as you claim to be, and then flew off.
Seagull stuff.
We persevered too, until our next door neighbours had to return overseas unexpectedly and sold us their top loader for $130.
We’ve never looked back.
markjs @ #1389 Friday, June 10, 2016 at 12:55 pm
So you advocate the 9mm Glock therapy?
It’s a simple as this: any situation where guns have to be used by three police officers in a crowded shopping mall HAS to be questioned, and very seriously so.
kevin-one-seven @ #1390 Friday, June 10, 2016 at 12:55 pm
It’s a difference of opinion on one issue. Put it in perspective.
She seems to have got locked into a particular position which was irreconcilable with Cabinet’s position. She is doing the honourable things and should eventually come back.
richard koser @ #1245 Friday, June 10, 2016 at 6:54 am
Not really – there were always going to be issues with educating people to use the new system this time around. Still three weeks of education to go plus voters will see instructions on how to vote on their ballot papers, and some might actually follow them.
But even if everybody just voted 1 above the line and exhausted their vote by mistake that would still be a better system than the undemocratic abomination we have left behind.
Unless by unintended consequences you mean Hanson, in which case (i) it’s difficult to credit that Hanson really has 5% nationwide, especially when this finding comes from an untested pollster (ii) if she did then she would bolt in under the old system too, most likely including at a half-Senate election.
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/adeel-khan-found-guilty-of-murder-following-rozelle-explosion-and-fire-20160601-gp8xdi.html
Shorten Presser now