BludgerTrack: 52.1-47.9 to Labor

Not much happening on the poll aggregate this week, but lots of news to report on preselections and related party shenanigans.

I’ve been a bit tardy updating BludgerTrack this week, but as you can see below, you haven’t been missing much. The moral of the story is that a single Essential Research result is unlikely to change much under the new set-up, particularly when, as present, it accounts for 16 out of 20 available data points. Things may be different when, presumably, Newspoll comes along either tonight or tomorrow night. No new numbers this week on leadership ratings. Keep reading below the fold for a whole bunch of material on party games, and also note that there’s a separate post below this one for presidential election discussion.

bt2019-2016-10-19

Other news:

• The Victorian branch of the ALP last week signed off on Kimberley Kitching as Stephen Conroy’s Senate replacement, following the Right faction warlord’s surprise retirement announcement in mid-September. Kitching is a lawyer with Cornwall Stodart, and was formerly a Melbourne City councillor and general manager of the troubled Health Services Union. The royal commission into trade union corruption recommended charges be pursued against Kitching relating to allegations she completed tests for workplace entry permits on behalf of union organisers, but none have been forthcoming in the two years since. Kitching was effectively unopposed in the vote by the party’s Public Office Selection Committee, as factional arrangements reserve the seat for the Right. She had won the Right’s backing ahead of Diana Taylor, former Clayton Utz lawyer and a director at the Geelong Football Club, who had support from Richard Marles, federal front-bencher and member for Corio. According to the Herald Sun, other nominees included “Warrnambool city councillor Jacinta Ermacora, former state member for Benalla Denise Allan, Maribyrnong councillor Sarah Carter and 2010 Young Victorian of the Year Wesa Chau”.

Kitching and her husband, Andrew Landeryou – whose VexNews blog trod on many a toe until he retired it in 2013 out of deference to his wife’s political ambitions – are both close to Bill Shorten. Reports have identified widespread criticism of Shorten’s actions within the party from mostly unidentified sources, although Anthony Albanese declined an opportunity to endorse Kitching, saying her preselection was “a matter for the Victorian branch”. Albanese also said there was “a case for ensuring that members have votes in Senate pre-selections” – true of the his own branch in New South Wales, but not in Victoria. Sarah Martin of The Australian reports that a Left-sponsored motion at the Victorian party’s state conference next month will propose “giving members a greater say in Senate preselections”.

Labor sources quoted by Katherine Murphy of The Guardian claim Shorten’s backing for Kitching was motivated by a desire to harness HSU numbers as he seeks to plug the gap in his factional network created by Conroy’s departure. James Campbell of the Herald Sun earlier reported that the sudden exit of Conroy was causing ructions in the Right, owing to a power-sharing agreement that had been reached between the secretaries of the Australian Workers Union, National Union of Workers, Transport Workers Union and the power bloc associated with state MP Adem Somyurek. It was understood at the time that the TWU vote was a proxy for the broader Conroy group, but it now stood to fall entirely to the union’s secretary, John Berger, leaving Conroy’s other allies out in the cold. Berger’s favoured candidate was Bill Baarini, TWU union officer and former mayor of Hobsons Bay, but Shorten concurred with a view that this would violate the party’s affirmative action rules.

• Further argybargy is unfolding in the Victorian ALP courtesy of a Left faction split between the “National Left”, associated with Anthony Albanese, and the breakaway “Industrial Left” of Victorian Senator Kim Carr. This was formalised after the election when a Left majority resolved to dump Carr from the front bench in favour of Linda Burney, the former New South Wales deputy state leader and newly elected member for Barton. Bill Shorten ensured Carr was accommodated by expanding the front bench, reflecting the importance of the “stability pact” between Carr and the Shorten-Conroy axis in managing affairs the Victorian branch’s affairs. However, the split meant Carr ally Gavin Marshall no longer had Left support to retain his position as Deputy President in the Senate, which has instead gone to Sue Lines from Western Australia.

Marshall last week foreshadowed preselections against Victorian members of the National Left, who include two shadow cabinet members in Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga) and Catherine King (Ballarat) and a junior front-bencher, Andrew Giles (Scullin). As James Massola of Fairfax reports, Marshall confirmed he was organising a challenge to Giles, although no candidate has been identified; claimed there was “discontent in Ballarat”, and that it was a “possibility” he would back a challenge to King; and suggested Macklin could be sure of being spared only because it was “well known that she is retiring”, which a spokesperson for Macklin denied.

• Bob Day, Family First Senator from South Australia, announced last week he would resign from his position after his home building group went into liquidation. Phillip Coorey of the Financial Review reports that Day hopes to be succeeded by his chief-of-staff, Rikki Lambert, who shares his zeal for a pro-business line on workplace relations. However, he faces opposition from Robert Brokenshire, a Liberal-turned-Family First member of the state parliament, and perhaps also Lucy Gichuhi, a Kenyan-born lawyer who was Day’s running mate at the July 2 election.

• A motion moved by Tony Abbott at yesterday’s state council meeting of the New South Wales Liberal Party calling for democratised preselections was reportedly defeated by 246 votes to 174. This was pursued despite the concurrence of Malcolm Turnbull and Mike Baird that the proposed measure should feature among a range of reforms to be considered at a party convention next year, to which state council agreed. Abbott’s proposal would involve plebiscites of party members for all preselections, which is broadly favoured by the party’s hard Right and opposed by the centre Right and the moderates, since it would diminish the importance of the latter’s control of the state executive.

• A poll conducted by Research Now last month for the Australia Institute asked 1426 respondents to list their first and second favoured options for the government to negotiate with in getting legislation through the Senate, which found 54% rating Labor first or second compared with 42% for the Nick Xenophon Team, 32% for the Greens and 29$ for One Nation.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

707 comments on “BludgerTrack: 52.1-47.9 to Labor”

Comments Page 4 of 15
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  1. Confessions – you need to apologise to all the old white and entitled crusty males with false teeth that smell like stale couch fart before they all…..err….die?

    For referring to old white men as old white men? That’s like Trump pledging to sue women for accusing him of doing the very things he bragged of doing to them.

  2. GG – are you serious? Or is that like me saying 85% of my time online is spent clicking “forgot password” links – you know, something you say when you’ve nothing to say…

  5. Confessions – Trump is suing his victims? I must silently mouth the words “what the fuck” at least fifty times a day…

  12. afternoon all.
    As commented above, Day hasn’t yet resigned from the Senate, and it is likely he is staying to influence his successor.
    What happens if he hasn’t resigned, and the government rushes the IR bills to a vote in the senate.
    If it passes by 1 vote and he is found to be insolvent, could there he a high court challenge?

  13. BB
    Complex question. The pyramidal structure of NSW health tends to allow those best able to cover their butt to rise to the top and they are probably not best suited to make the hard decisions.
    On a more local level it is fascinating to watch the different approaches and problems of the three main streams of administration;
    Corporate – makes sure the infrastructure is in place but has no knowledge of treating patients and can be quickly confused when matters of patient safety conflict with the budget
    Medical – our main problem is controlling Gen Y residents and visiting medical officers who think they are the Sun King – I actually enjoy this interaction very much
    Nursing – I feel sorry for – they have 45% of the workforce and those who can do the most serious damage to patients. Nurses are very diverse in education, intelligence and attitude and NSW Health’s approach has been to impose an encyclopedia of policies that cover every eventuality. In many cases this has helped but in others its only practical use has been to find a cause for blame when inevitably an incident occurs
    Having said that I think NSW hospitals are a lot safer than they were 10 years ago and a change in culture is slowly occurring largely thanks to hospital administration.
    The number of serious incidents compared to the volume of work is low

  16. Oakeshott Country
    “Having said that I think NSW hospitals are a lot safer than they were 10 years ago ”
    .
    What would be the main change(s) that caused the improvement ?

  21. Comrade well I have voted Liberal on occasions 🙂

    Seriously though the whole argument shows poor taste. It’s all a bit too childish for old farts to be involved in.

  27. Poroti
    Governance systems are much better developed and safety checks are taken more seriously.
    3 things that were important:
    1. The Gillard reforms which could have gone a lot further and have been peeled back by the current government but had 3 main points that added to efficiency and safety:
    a. 4 hour rule in emergency – 91% of patients must be cleared in four hours or the hospital loses money – people no longer die in the waiting room or ambulance on the hospital ramp
    b. National surgery waiting time limits – inappropriate and unsafe waiting lists have disappeared
    c. activity based funding – transparent funding of hospitals which are rewarded for safety and efficiency
    2. In NSW the Garling report could also have achieved more but led to an emphasis on hand washing, infection control and clinical handover of patients between shifts
    3. The national accreditation scheme which has been around a long time but has improved a great deal in the last decade so that each hospital must prove that safety policies are in control by conducting audits and meeting a dashboard of KPIs

  28. OC, some hospital administrators should be in jail with your kiddie fiddling clergy. To permit the huge hours the junior medical doctors are required to work is criminal. A relative of mine was on call a few weekends ago. This meant 36 hours in the hospital performing over twenty operations. This is after a full week at work where a normal day is 12 hours long. After spending 36 hours in the hospital over Saturday and Sunday, it’s a seven o’clock start on Monday for another busy week. The record is 140 hours over seven consequative days. It is not uncommon to work every day in a calandar month (some of which may be only half days which are only 8 hours long).

    This is a criminal activity and should not be allowed.

  31. Can we update Boerwar’s software so he can say something other than irrelevant / dieing when slagging off the Greens. I’d personally add a chance of “The Greens are setting up a circus on Mars” just to spice things up a bit.

  34. peebee @ #178 Sunday, October 23, 2016 at 4:49 pm

    OC, some hospital administrators should be in jail with your kiddie fiddling clergy. To permit the huge hours the junior medical doctors are required to work is criminal. A relative of mine was on call a few weekends ago. This meant 36 hours in the hospital performing over twenty operations. This is after a full week at work where a normal day is 12 hours long. After spending 36 hours in the hospital over Saturday and Sunday, it’s a seven o’clock start on Monday for another busy week. The record is 140 hours over seven consequative days. It is not uncommon to work every day in a calandar month (some of which may be only half days which are only 8 hours long).
    This is a criminal activity and should not be allowed.

    Absolutely!

  36. Davidwh
    Sunday, October 23, 2016 at 4:38 pm
    …”Comrade well I have voted Liberal on occasions”…

    There is no excuse for doing so.

  37. Goodness PB – where do you live?
    These days no RMO in NSW is allowed to be on duty for more than 16 hours straight and those shifts are rare. Safe hours are limited to a maximum 70 hours per week with numerous provisos for rest time.

    On call is different, particularly for surgical registrars. I spent my registrar years doing 24/7/365 – when I took leave the hospital referred to a neighbouring hospital and it was workable but I learnt a lot in those years. The current tidal wave of doctors graduating means that those days are either over or about to be over. The registrars will have an easier time in training but are likely to be significantly under-employed as concultants.

    I think your relative should have a serious talk with his bosses or the medical administration

  38. E
    The Greens can dish it out but they are remarkably thin-skinned when it comes to copping a well-deserved return of serve.
    You were silent on Nicholas’ provocative and typically stupid Greens post.
    THAT was alright.
    But when I give Nicholas the well-deserved rounds of the kitchen sink in return of serve you start wanting to change the rules.
    Do grow up.

  39. Invent a new party.
    Name it “The League of Incongruous Imbeciles”
    Voting for them would at the very least, be honest.

  41. I am reminded of the old line that the quickest way to create more small businesses is to put engineers (or accountants or lawyers, choose your own poison) in charge of big businesses.

  42. It sort of makes sense for the Icelanders to have a Pirate Party. They are returning to their roots.

    Haha. That’s exactly what I thought.

  43. BW
    Nicholas’s post was about voting record (ie something factual and sparked by a recent thing) and didn’t even say anything about Labor being useless or same/same. Your post was your typical response to the Greens being proximate to a conversation which is why I suggested you add at least a new line.

    Also Pollbludger is hardly an even playing field, it’s generally dominated by a clique of Laborite’s who seem to prefer the Coalition to the Greens, so you don’t exactly need defending.

  44. OC, Victoria. There was also an insidious strategy of stopping complaints. If you complain you can kiss your chances of ever becoming a surgeon goodbye as you will never get on the program.

    But once on the program, the system still requires a huge effort. I honestly don’t know how these young medical people survive. I know their relationships don’t.

  45. peebee @ #194 Sunday, October 23, 2016 at 5:24 pm

    OC, Victoria. There was also an insidious strategy of stopping complaints. If you complain you can kiss your chances of ever becoming a surgeon goodbye as you will never get on the program.
    But once on the program, the system still requires a huge effort. I honestly don’t know how these young medical people survive. I know their relationships don’t.

    Too many also die by their own hand.

  46. OC, there is also the financial costs, membership of the college of surgeons (which I believe is in the order of 12 to 16,000 per year, cost of applications and sitting exams (one lot cost $8,000) all on a junior’s doctors salary. There is also time taken to study for the exams. This is usually done during their annual leave (so reduced holidays).

    In the end there are no guarantees. I was told only 60% of the doctors on the program get through. A terrible waste if you don’t make it.

  47. I concur that the situation with medical personnel is horrific. It’s also likely a massive net drain on the system (exhausted medical staff are highly unlikely to be performing their best) and you’d probably get more people entering if the work conditions weren’t so abysmal.

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