BludgerTrack: 52.1-47.9 to Labor

Little change this week to a poll aggregate that now comes with the added bonus of One Nation. Also featured: South Australian and Northern Territory redistribution news.

Results from Newspoll and Essential Research have elicited next to no change on BludgerTrack, at least so far as the results are concerned – negligible movement all round on voting intention, although what’s there is enough for the Coalition to claw back a seat in Queensland on the projection. Newspoll provides a set of leadership numbers as always, and here too their effect is negligible.

bt2019-2016-12-07

What is new on BludgerTrack is that it’s now tracking One Nation, although the only hard data here is that Essential Research has been providing since the start of September. Polls that don’t report One Nation still have some influence on them through their “others” results, and the estimated results for them show up as data points on the chart. I’ve implemented a bit of a cheat to get the One Nation trendline started from the beginning by using their national Senate vote of 4.3% as a post-election starting point. However, the “since election” reading on the tables goes off the national House of Representatives result of 1.3%, which is unflattering to them as they only fielded 15 candidates.

Two bits of electoral boundaries news to relate:

• The redistribution of the two federal seats in the Northern Territory has been finalised, with no changes made to September’s draft proposal. Three thousand voters have been transferred from growing Solomon (covering Darwin and Palmerston) to stagnant Lingiari (covering the remainder of the territory), in an area encompassing Yarrawonga, Farrar, Johnston and Zuccoli at the eastern edge of Palmerston, together with the Litchfield Shire areas around Knuckey Lagoon east of Darwin. To the very limited extent that this will have an electoral effect, it will be to strengthen Labor in Solomon and weaken them in Lingiari, the area transferred being conservative-leaning.

• The South Australian state redistribution has been finalised, with a large number of changes made to the draft published in August. These are largely to the benefit of the Liberals, who stand aggrieved by their failure to win government in 2014 despite winning the two-party vote by 53-47. The draft redrew the Labor marginals of Elder and Mawson to make them notionally Liberal. However, they did the opposite in Fisher, a normally conservative-leaning seat that Labor managed to win at a by-election in December 2014 after the death of independent member Bob Such. This seat has been renamed Hurtle Vale, and pushed southwards into the Labor-voting Morphett Vale area.

The new set of changes adds a further two seats to the Liberal column, most notably Colton, where Labor cops a transfer of 8000 voters from Glenelg North and West Beach (currently in Morphett), turning the Labor margin of 2% into a Liberal margin of 3.7%. The other seat is Newland, where there was so little in it that a further 200 voters in Humbug Scrub have been enough to nudge it to the Liberal side of the pendulum. There has also been a further boost to the Liberal margin in Elder, where gains around Lower Mitcham in the east (currently in Waite) push the margin out from 1.1% to 4.3%.

The Liberals has also benefited in Adelaide, where the reversal of a proposal to move Walkerville out of the electorate leaves the margin at 2.0%, compared with 2.5% at the election and 0.6% in the draft; and in the Labor-held seat of Lee, where an extra 4000 voters from Colton reduce the Labor margin from 4.6% to 2.6%.

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.

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

Comments Page 4 of 12
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  1. @ Peebee – Canberra’s population is increasing. LR will support that by allowing for more high rise without causing traffic issues, and it will financially incentivise infill. The only other option, which I assume you are advocating for is greenfields development. I’m not convinced that that is what Canberra needs more than it already is getting.

    You can’t just say that one solution to increasing population isn’t great – none of the options are ever perfect. Explain which you think is best and why.

  2. You said the second interconnector would only cost a billion dollars and be good value as it will last another 40-50 years. Problem. We won’t own the fucking thing, the grid owners will and we will be paying for it through the nose for the next 99 years. Grid costs are already 40% of the electricity bill in SA, and are why people are leaving the grid in droves.

    Transmission is relatively cheap, and a regulated monopoly. Distribution is where the costs are. I’m arguing that we change the way both are regulated to reduce prices.

    No thanks I’ll go with my own solar panels and storage. When the system is paid off I will be energy independent with no major bills for a long time. When the batteries reach the end of life the replacements will be dirt cheap.

    Lucky for you, you can afford that solution for yourself. The grid, on the other hand, is a collective endeavour.

    P.S. Is your union something to do with fossil fuel extraction? Maybe power station boiler cleaning?

    No, at the moment I’m represented by (and putting up posters for) the NTEU, but thanks for asking.

  3. VE my preferred option is to get to the point that the population stops growing. Then we would not have to destroy nature to accomodate the increase.

    After all, population can’t grow forever as there are always limits to growth.

    In the meantime, you come up with options like my old primary school teacher used to give me…. Which punishment would you like this time?

  4. LU

    Lucky for you, you can afford that solution for yourself. The grid, on the other hand, is a collective endeavour.

    I agree the grid must be maintained – it’s just that the current market rules are unsustainable, and by not giving householders, farmers, businesses whatever a decent feed in tariff everyone loses.
    The real problem is that the issues are complex, and the government’s failure to objectively address the issues will create a huge mess – like the NBN.
    “Jobsen Groethe” will become “Miss D’Opportunity”.

  5. And, of course, household electricity use is not where the problems lie, whether we’re talking the need for grid transmission or reducing emissions. Industry is the big user of energy (which is why we could have an effective ETS which basically left normal households alone).

  6. @ Peebee – welcome to the real world.

    You can’t just oppose spending money building schools, roads, PT, houses because you don’t want the people to be born, or move here. They ARE, so what are you going to do about it?

  7. Zoomster,
    It may help if you tell us what level of immigration you would regard as appropriate for our (Australia’s) needs, and why we need that. A range would be fine.
    If you look at the link below you’ll see 189,097 people immigrated in 2014-15. 80,610 immigrated in 2000-01. I believe halving the current figure would help us catch up with infrastructure.
    What do you think?
    http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1516/Quick_Guides/MigrationStatistics

  8. Citizen,

    That is a damning article by Roger Cohen. However, I’m not sure he’s correct when he says “Manus and Nauru are a growing embarrassment to Australia”. Dutton wears it with pride. I’m sure the reaction here will be that Cohen is just another ‘liberal elite’.

  9. Hi Trog,

    The real problem is that the issues are complex, and the government’s failure to objectively address the issues will create a huge mess – like the NBN.

    Well I’m not going to argue with you on that one! Thankfully we have the statutory bodies – the AEMC, AEMO, AER and the like – in place to manage this *fairly* well, and although slow, they are actually moving in the right direction. Have a read of the AEMC approach paper, it’s a pretty good summary of the technical challenges and opportunities that are emerging (albeit with some technical mistakes).

    Hi Zoom,

    And, of course, household electricity use is not where the problems lie, whether we’re talking the need for grid transmission or reducing emissions. Industry is the big user of energy (which is why we could have an effective ETS which basically left normal households alone).

    True, but most energy-intensive industry is not connected through the (expensive to build, operate and maintain) low voltage network, where the cost increases have been the greatest and politicians feel the need to intervene the most.

  10. VE, I didn’t say stop spending money on those things you mention. That will still be required in a if ZPG scenario. All I was saying that the increase in population means you will do more of it and in an unsustainable way.

    As you are fond of asking questions, I will return the favour and ask this of you: what is your preferred upper limit of the size of the population?

  11. More stuff.

    For years energy experts have been advocating rule changes and practices that would make the grid faster and more responsive and take advantage of the possibilities of new technologies. But with gob-smacking arrogance, the market authorities have kicked these proposals down the road, saying they are not urgent, or not needed.

    The AEMO report – as did Finkel’s – highlights just how urgent these reforms and rule changes are. The grid, noted Finkel, is locked in the last century, overpriced and dumb. The transition is happening and it is happening rapidly. There is no going back. And market rules, policies and practices need rapid reform.

    This blackout – even with the catastrophic weather events that ripped three transmission lines out of the ground – may have been avoided. But the response of the operators and rule makers and policy makers has been as it always has been; simply to try to shove more generation and more poles and wires into the market.

    https://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2016/12/12/bludgertrack-52-1-47-9-labor-3/comment-page-4/#comment-2513110

  13. Yep, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that AEMO stuffed up in the case of SA’s blackout.

    The black-start failures were particularly appalling, because it’s still very possible that the SA system would have collapsed with the storm’s effect on the network. This has absolutely nothing to do with wind generation.

  14. @ PeeBee – the only objectively correct answer. An amount at, or below the point at which the Earth’s resources are replenished faster than they are used.

    Currently, we use up a year’s worth of resources by Aug 8th, so my answer would be 4.46 billion at our current level of selfishness.

    Ideally, we would solve this problem primarily by using less resources per capita, through a switch to renewables, public transport, eating a healthy (i.e. lower) amount of meat than we currently do, recycling, reducing the use of plastics, becoming less consumeristic.

    These changes would be difficult, but likely easier than convincing humanity to reduce it’s population by 3 billion. It’s also easier than running out of resources.

    My point is, this task will take humanity generations to sort out. It is not something that the ACT government can get done in the next 5 years. So it needs to make more land available for development, it needs to approve taller buildings in some places, and it needs to develop transport solutions.

    Saying that you don’t like the Canberra Light Rail because Canberra (with or without LR) is going to have more people and fewer green spaces, is just not a valid point.

  16. We’re full. Here are the tests:
    1. We have passed peak sustainable water use.
    2. A quarter of the Reef is dead.
    3. 100 km of WA’s kelp forests are dead.
    4. We are pumping acid, sediments and nutrients on the Reef which is struggling
    5. We have an accumulating mass of introduced plant, animal and smaller pathogens overwhelming our natural biota. There are so many examples that it is difficult to know where to start. Here is a good one. All those images you have of the Finke Basin of red rocks, rock pools and magnificent old river bank and river bed eucalypts will completely taken over by Athol Pines. This is only one of the slow moving ecological disasters that are on the move right now.
    6. In many agricultural areas the rate of soil loss is greater than the rate of soil formation.
    7. All our commercial fisheries are fully exploited. Australia’s poor can no longer afford fresh Australian fish.
    8. Our forests are fully exploited.
    9. We are losing biodiversity (as represented by the sum of within-species range losses) at an increasing rate. Translated – as species lose range they lose the genetic expression that evoved in that part of the species’ range. Range loss and range fragmentation are already a disaster. Warming is now working away at eroding the warm edge of the distributions of many Australian species.
    9. Our ecosystem services are declining as our ecosystems decline.
    10. 7000 hectares of the Gulf’s mangroves are dead.
    11. An ever increasing proportion of our prime farm lands are being destroyed by housing.
    12. Our ground water is either fully exploited or over-exploited.

    The notion that we can add a couple of hundred thousand people a year to all of the above and get back to some sort of sustinability is delusional.

  17. ML

    Unlike yourself, I haven’t reached a conclusion before the conversation has even started.

    A reminder: my original contention was that bringing in immigrants from other countries helped lower world wide population growth.

    That does not mean that I have decided on ‘the’ desirable level of immigration for Australia; I’d need to look at a lot more data/evidence than I have so far.

  18. TS

    Is right of course. Renewable energy enables more options like microgrids. With a lot of renewables you only need a grid as a bacup.

    Maintaining a two way transmission of power grid means when one power source eg The one on your roof fails you have another source.

    Its why Labors proposal of community energy hubs makes so much sense. power supply could become a core Council service

  19. Boer

    the problem is that everywhere is full; thus we need to tackle world population growth, none of which is sustainable. Bringing migrants into countries like Australia (perversely) is one way of tackling the overall problem.

  20. We definitely need to consider the evidence, Zoomster.
    We could do worse than start with Boerwar’s comment, immediately preceding your own, to commence the investigation.

  21. “Bringing migrants into countries like Australia (perversely) is one way of tackling the overall problem”
    Again, we must ask the question, Zoomster “How many”

  22. zoomster @ #144 Monday, December 12, 2016 at 3:08 pm

    ML
    ‘We are not the only country with an ageing population, but others are not importing young people like we are..’
    Absolutely they are.
    Many of them are doing it ‘unofficially’, however, by employing foreigners sort of permanently without giving them citizenship – America does this with Mexicans. Japan is looking at ways to make their foreign workforce citizens, because their restrictive immigration laws are proving to be counter productive. Merkel’s agreement to allow so many refugees into Germany was seen as part of a push for more migration.

    And there is no point to it when ‘highly skilled older’ workers (45+) are tossed on the scrap heap and go on welfare. And don’t give me any bs about this not happening.

  23. ML

    And we’re not going to get an answer to ‘how many’ on this blog, at least not from me.

    It’s a very important question, and it needs a lot of examination.

    You could start off by defining what we mean by ‘sustainable’ (very few places in the world are) or whether we’re talking about what’s best for Australia (‘pull up the ladder, I’m all right, Jack”) or the world as a whole.

    We certainly won’t get anywhere by arriving at an answer before we ask the question.

    As for Boer’s list, most of that is the result of people living in Australia, full stop. To prevent many of those (very serious) issues occurring, we would have had to keep the population to pre-settlement levels….which wouldn’t have worked, any way, because other countries would have occupied the space.

  24. Zoomster ‘A reminder: my original contention was that bringing in immigrants from other countries helped lower world wide population growth.’

    It can also be argued that accepting more imigrants will RAISE the world wide population growth. When migrants arrive here, they may well continue with the same fecundity they had back in the ‘old country’, but now, with perhaps more wealth and nutrition, they can have more kids, kids who will survive to adulthood due to better medical access/clean water/sanitation etc.

    Which contention is correct? Who knows.

  25. ZPG is essential IMO, both for the world as a whole, but Australia in particular.

    Australia’s ecosystems are much more marginal and less resilient than many places in the world, and we are overstressing them now. And yes, water is a big ongoing issue – we can’t even sort out the MDB now, let alone in a time of actual crisis.

    Yes, world population growth needs to halt now – or logically 50 years ago – to have even a hope of avoiding a catastrophe, but while we should be doing everything we can with a generous foreign aid budget to promote all those good things that help reduce the pressure to have large families elsewhere in the world, we can’t directly control what happens elsewhere in the world, and we should start here.

    My position has long been that we should substantially cut the general immigration program while substantially boosting the humanitarian program leaving our overall population growth stable (given the humanitarian program is less than 10% of our current immigration rate this isn’t hard to achieve).

    The various aspects of demographic pain coming through need to be planned for, but they are all transitional issues and shouldn’t be substantial inputs into our long term policy/strategy.

  27. zoomster

    At the moment, yes, there is some mismanagement of our water supplies – because we can afford to mismanage it. We ‘sell’ water very cheaply, so it isn’t valued. If it were, our channels would be piped, drip irrigation would rule, and we would not still be planting permanent crops in irrigation areas.

    Therein lies the problem, I think. We are not putting a value on water. We should be.

  28. Recreational fishers have renewed calls for a ban on the importation of uncooked prawns after the discovery of a devastating prawn disease in Queensland.

    Australia had been the only major prawn growing country free of the highly contagious white spot virus until it was found earlier this month on prawn farms between Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

    The industry has previously warned white spot could potentially be brought in with uncooked frozen prawns and authorities are now investigating whether that’s happened.

    White spot has reduced prawn farm productivity by up to 40 per cent overseas.

    http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2016/s4590936.htm

  33. Zoomster, ‘We do know, which is why I put forward the argument.’

    Sorry, I thought you said it was ‘your contention’. Do you mind providing a link that provides this information?

  34. ‘The notion that we can add a couple of hundred thousand people a year to all of the above and get back to some sort of sustinability is delusional.’

    None of the problems you raise will be affected significantly if we stop immigration while the birth rate in Australia doesn’t fall appreciably.

    What do you suggest?
    Or is it just easier to blame the bloody immigrants?

  37. trog sorrenson @ #143 Monday, December 12, 2016 at 2:58 pm

    Note: The other day on PB I made a claim which on further examination I realise was incorrect. I claimed that it already cheaper to simply go off grid in SA using the solar plus the latest lithium ion batteries – such as Tesla’s Powerall 2. This was not correct.

    True. The household Tesla batteries are not really suitable for off-grid applications anyway – they are simply not large enough for many applications (even the powerwall 2), they work at voltages that make the other system components (chargers, inverters etc) more expensive – or else they need DC to DC down conversion of dubious efficiency, and their are concerns about their ability to deliver power at sufficient levels for off-grid applications. Lead acid batteries scale better, are cheaper, deliver higher amperage, and can actually be cost-competitive with grid power. However, that was not your only howler – you also claimed that solar cells still generated 80% of their full power even on cloudy days. The reality is more like 20%.

    But I do agree with you on one thing – everyone who can do so should be leaving the grid as soon as they possibly can. The more people that leave the grid, the higher the costs are for those that remain. This has a two-fold benefit – it will encourage even more people to leave the grid, and it also means that those who remain are paying closer to the true costs for their power.

  39. The Drum this evening is a bit of a disaster, although a person might like it if they enjoyed Judith Sloane being pedantic, Hamish McDonald (RN mornings – I hope I have his name right) being extremely argumentative and John Barron, as usual, talking too much.

  41. We shouldn’t stop immigration, but it should be carefully calibrated. There is a correlation between sustainability and population, but it also depends on how we consume. E.g. to use one of Boerwar’s examples – we could sustain a lot higher populations in certain fisheries if they were better managed with larger fishing exclusion zones etc.
    We may also be able to do things in a completely different way as energy becomes much cheaper – such us proliferation of desalination plants.
    Barnaby’s “more dams” idea is largely bullshit, but large scale desalination may enable us to establish regional communities in areas formerly regarded as desert wasteland.
    e.g. http://reneweconomy.com.au/world-first-solar-tower-powered-tomato-farm-opens-port-augusta-41643/

  42. PeeBee

    It’s one of those known-knowns from pre internet days – I’ll have to make do with examples from similar countries…

    ‘.. the fertility rates of immigrants to the US have been found to decrease sharply in the second generation as a result of improving education and income…’

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4255510/

    There is evidence that this trend in the US is actually accelerating, with birth rates amongst migrant women falling —

    ‘In 2008, immigrant women had a TFR of 2.75 children; by 2013 it had fallen to 2.22 — a .53 child decline. For natives it declined from 2.07 to 1.79 — a .28 child decline. ‘

    http://cis.org/declining-fertility

    So (in the US) migrants are likely to have smaller families and even this number is decreasing.

    …sorry, would go further but must go and cook tea…

  45. zoomster
    #192 Monday, December 12, 2016 at 6:03 pm
    What’s on the menu?
    I’m glad to hear the term “tea”. We, the favourite daughter and I use that instead of “dinner”. 🙂

  46. P1

    you also claimed that solar cells still generated 80% of their full power even on cloudy days

    On some cloudy days they are actually more efficient, because of various light dispersion effects. Depends on the cloud density.
    But you are right to pull me up on this. The main point is that even places like London have considerable potential for solar power generation, because the actual number of days with complete dense cloud cover are relatively few.

  47. Zoomster

    It has long been known birthrate falls as a nation becomes more “developed”. Assisting developing nations to improve their lot would have a far greater impact on population growth .

  48. Poor Mal the formerly Magnificent can’t even address a Republic convention without getting into trouble with the hard right.
    That’s the thing with them. You can cave in as much as you like, but it will never ever be enough.

  49. ** Also if you want to know how to save water read Frank Herbert’s Dune. **
    Not keen on recyc, but I want to know whats in the spice stuff the navigators use.

  50. The Turnbull government will seek to introduce a new levy on telecommunications companies to help pay for the roll-out of the NBN in regional areas, a change it admits will lead to higher prices for internet consumers.

    The move goes against the advice of the government’s own hand-picked expert panel, which warned such a levy “causes greater distortions than it is intended to remedy”.

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/this-could-cripple-companies-like-us-government-announces-new-nbn-tax-on-broadband-companies-20161212-gt9hxj.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=nc&eid=socialn%3Atwi-13omn1677-edtrl-other%3Annn-17%2F02%2F2014-edtrs_socialshare-all-nnn-nnn-vars-o%26sa%3DD%26usg%3DALhdy28zsr6qiq

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